[6] After its premiere at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, where Gainsbourg won Best Actress, Antichrist immediately received polarizing feedback; critics generally praised its artistic execution, but remained strongly divided regarding its substantive merit.

[7] An unnamed couple have sex in their Seattle apartment while their unsupervised infant son, Nic, climbs up to the bedroom window and falls out of it to his death.

They hike to their isolated cabin in the woods, called Eden, where she spent time with Nic the previous summer while writing a thesis criticizing gynocide.

The area becomes increasingly sinister to the man; acorns rapidly pelt the metal roof, he wakes up with a hand covered in ticks that have become swollen with his blood, and he encounters a self-disemboweling red fox that tells him "chaos reigns."

In the dark attic, the man finds the woman's thesis studies, which include violent portraits of witch hunts and a scrapbook in which her writing becomes increasingly frantic and illegible.

The man reprimands her for this and, in a frenzied moment, they have violent sex at the base of an ominous dead tree where bodies are intertwined within the exposed roots.

She attacks him in the shed, accuses him of planning to leave her, initiates sex with him, and then smashes a large block of wood onto his erect penis, causing him to lose consciousness.

Reaching the top of a hill, under a brilliant light, he watches in awe as hundreds of women in antiquated clothes come towards him with their faces blurred as they walk past him through the forest.

Film scholar Magdalena Zolkos interprets Antichrist as an "origins story", citing its unnamed characters and setting—a woods called Eden—as primary reasons.

"[10] Zolkos characterizes this nexus as being made of three "separate, psychic events: the inscrutable and threatening surroundings of the forest; her readings in the history of religious misogyny; and an accident when she loses the child in the woods a year before his death.

In Antichrist, it is evident in the woman's intense anxiety and depressive withdrawal expressed through the neo-romantic landscape and supernaturalist elements of the forest to which she and her partner have retreated.

[21] Antichrist was originally scheduled for production in 2005, but its executive producer Peter Aalbæk Jensen accidentally revealed the film's planned revelation: that earth was created by Satan and not by God.

[23] During an early casting attempt, English actors who had come to Copenhagen had to be sent home, while von Trier was crying because his poor condition did not allow him to meet them.

[21] Gainsbourg recalled that von Trier provided little direction during the shoot, but characterized the filming process as freeing and allowing room for both herself and Dafoe to experiment with varying performance styles.

[39] Recorded in January 2009 at the Kastelskirken (Citadel Church) in Copenhagen, the film's versions of "Lascia ch'io pianga" were performed by Bjarte Eike [no] (violin), Tuva Semmingsen (mezzo-soprano), Karina Gauvin (soprano) and Tempo Rubato ensemble.

The musician and critic Robert Barry described the score as the film's "in-between bits, the judders and rumbles and low howls drifting somewhere undecidable between composed music and sound design ... the un-music, the audiable, the hum of the world.

"[40] A decade after the film's theatrical run, its soundtrack saw a limited-edition vinyl release, issued on 6 September 2019 by the English record label Cold Spring.

[45] At the subsequent press conference, Trier was asked by a journalist from the Daily Mail to justify why he made the film, to which the director responded that he found the question strange since he considered the audience as his guests, "not the other way around."

[51][52] The film was not submitted to the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and released unrated in the United States,[53] as the filmmakers knew the graphic violence and sex would get an NC-17 rating.

There is no doubt that some viewers will find the images disturbing and offensive, but the BBFC's consumer advice provides a clear warning to enable individuals to make an informed viewing choice.

[60][61] Politiken called it "a grotesque masterpiece", giving it a perfect score of 6 out of 6, and praised it for being completely unconventional while at the same time being "a profoundly serious, very personal ... piece of art about small things like sorrow, death, sex and the meaninglessness of everything.

"[62] Berlingske Tidende gave it a rating of 4 out of 6 and praised the "peerless imagery", and how "cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle effectively switches between Dogme-like hand-held scenes and wonderful stylized tableaux.

The website's critical consensus reads, "Gruesome, explicit and highly controversial; Lars von Trier's arthouse-horror, though beautifully shot, is no easy ride.

[69] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four, saying: Von Trier, who has always been a provocateur, is driven to confront and shake his audience more than any other serious filmmaker.

"[51] Duane Dudek of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel called Antichrist "Trier's most visually lush and technically rigorous film; it captures things at a molecular level and in a slow motion that all but brings the world to a halt ...

He noted that "Trier's self-conscious arrogance is calculated to split audiences into extremist factions, but Antichrist delivers enough beauty, terror and wonder to qualify as the strangest and most original horror movie of the year.

"[73] Australia's The Monthly critic Luke Davies viewed it as "a bleak but entrancing film that explores guilt, grief and many things besides ... that will anger as many people as it pleases", describing Trier's "command of the visually surreal" as "truly exceptional".

[78] A notable feature of the Australian release was the creation of a critically acclaimed poster that made prominent use of a pair of rusty scissors that had the actor's faces fused into the handles.

Described as a "tie-in epilogue from the film, in which the player would have possibly reprise the role of Willem Dafoe's character, who goes back to the lodge in the woods (called "Eden") to try to figure out the cause for the violent events seen in the movie."

The game was conceived to be played multiple times, to see all the different endings and events, as well as being planned to release Eden in 2010 for PC, Xbox Live Arcade and PSN.