This New Clip From Antlers Will Keep You Out Of The Woods For Good

The year 1993 saw an aspiring filmmaker named Guillermo del Toro release his first feature: "Cronos." It wasn't a globally-known blockbuster by any means, but this independent horror drama won its fair share of accolades and wound up on the good side of many critics all the same. Perhaps most importantly, it marked the beginning of del Toro's one-of-a-kind journey into the cinema world. From "Hellboy" to "The Shape of Water," the Oscar-winning director has maintained his cryptic, at times macabre style through it all — never hiding his love for all things monstrous and mystical.

Now approaching 30 years since his cinematic debut, del Toro continues to work on unique projects in various roles. As a director, next up is the psychological thriller "Nightmare Alley," which will premiere in December of 2021. Then a stop-motion adaptation of "Pinocchio" for Netflix will follow, arriving on the streamer sometime in 2022. Additionally, del Toro has worked as a producer alongside director Scott Cooper on "Antlers": a horror film about a young Oregon boy who's secretly housing a highly dangerous supernatural creature.

Like most productions of this era, "Antlers" fell victim to a handful of COVID-19-induced delays. It first eyed an April 17, 2020 release, though it had no choice but to shift to February 19, 2021, instead — missing that date as well. Thankfully, the wait is finally over, as "Antlers" will come out on October 29, and to further build anticipation, a chilling new clip from the movie has hit the internet.

This "Antlers "clip from the Searchlight Pictures YouTube channel isn't long, but the runtime doesn't make it any less scary. It begins with Lucas Weaver (Jeremy T. Thomas) walking through the woods alone when another boy approaches him. The kid fires off a few insults at him before they both freeze at the sound of a menacing growl above them. In a nearby tree sits a large, antlered creature, which pounces from its perch onto the bully and starts tearing into him. Lucas runs away as the kid screams in agony, stopping only to catch his breath and observe the carnage from a distance.

The beast seen in this clip is a wendigo: a menacing creature known in First Nations Algonquian culture as a ravenous consumer of human flesh. Given its real-world significance, Scott Cooper went to great lengths to portray it in an accurate yet tasteful manner, as not to do wrong by a culture that's not his own. This led him to bring in Native American consultants with much more knowledge of the wendigo and how the film should present it. "If I'm going to discuss any Native American folklore...I want to have people who know much more about it than I, and I want to get it right," he said at San Diego Comic-Con 2021 (via Screen Rant).

If this clip and the story behind the wendigo itself are of any indication, "Antlers" will certainly not be for the faint of heart.