Antebellum Review

In the wake of 2017's Get Out, the landscape of politically charged horror and thriller films has changed forever, as a new bar for brilliance was set by Jordan Peele. It's no surprise that it would go on to attract imitators looking to duplicate its success. Jordan Peele is a strong voice for social commentary and racial equality, but he can't and shouldn't hold the front all on his own - there are plenty of others who would do great by his side. Unfortunately... Antebellum is not quite that film, though it's not as unenjoyable as people have made it out to be either.

That being said, the first forty-five minutes of this film are likely its weakest aspect. The film's directors, Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz, are a pair of one Black and one white director, and this opening segment definitely feels like a slave movie directed by a white person for white people to get sad about and then pat themselves on the back for being so sad. Most of this portion of the film is composed of white slaveowners torturing Black slaves in various ways, leading to the eventual death by hanging of a newcomer. This is punctuated with some scenes of said new slave trying to find a way out, only for the protagonist, Eden, played by Janelle Monáe, to tell her to hold her head down and wait until the time is right.

This is the kind of slave movie that's more about forcing white people to confront the sins of their past - or just providing an excuse to torture Black bodies on screen for a couple of hours - than it is about actually commentating on racial inequality or providing any sort of justice or empowerment for America's Black population. We have far too many of these, and we don't need another. Looking through Twitter for reactions to the film after watching it, I noticed a number of people - mostly Black people - that seemed to have turned it off midway through, and I don't blame them at all - there's nothing here in this lengthy first act for Black viewers except horrific images of abuse towards people like them, and considering this is a film about racial injustice that is - eventually - geared towards empowering them, that's a pretty big problem.

About forty five minutes in, we cut jarringly to what seems to be Janelle Monáe's character in present time, and the story begins to twist and turn into a slice of Get Out-esque horror. Janelle Monáe plays Veronica, a famous Black writer who is a powerful voice for civil rights and racial equality in this fictional America. She is attending a conference to host a panel on her work, and weird things seem to be going on around her. We get strange people calling her, unmarked flowers delivered to her door by creepy men in suits, even a creepy child who whispers "no talking..." to her like something out of The Shining.

What brings these two segments together is a twist that tries to be clever but is actually extremely obvious in all but its details, and I won't spoil it but they do not do a good job of hiding it. The one legitimate question that I had throughout the film - is this a time travel story? An alternate universe? What exactly is going on here? - has a simultaneously disappointingly mundane and incredibly wacky answer by the end in a final reveal that'll likely shatter most viewer's sense of disbelief.

As previously mentioned, Antebellum is very clearly trying to emulate the success of Jordan Peele and his horror films - Get Out in particular - but it doesn't quite work in the same way. There's a brand new angle that's oddly refreshing and insightful, but it fails to really connect all of the dots that it puts down on the screen. It attempts to highlight the relationship between race and gender issues, but doesn't really have anything to say about that relationship, and while it does include plenty of comedic moments in the modern day segments of the film, it doesn't mesh the comedy and the horror nearly as well as Get Out did. Get Out weaponized its humor, making it increasingly unclear to the audience whether the events were supposed to be funny or unsettling and using this to impart a sense of the racial gaslighting that its protagonist was experiencing. Antebellum doesn't really have any of that - it's horrific in some places and funny in others, but it never meshes the two.

Despite all of my criticisms though, I'd be lying if I said I didn't have a really good time with this movie - at least, in part. The opening forty-five minutes amount to little more than insubstantial slavery torture porn, and that part is mostly disposable aside from a few stunning images and shots. The whole structure and pacing of the film doesn't work at all, and after a certain point it starts to get so ridiculous and hokey that it was kind of amazing in an ironic way. Every time a villain showed up, their acting, dialogue and camera framing felt like someone was slapping you in the face with a sign that said "this person is bad." There's some legitimately good acting and directing choices; the ending in particular has some incredible images, and the opening ten minutes is an impeccable single tracking shot that shows us a happy white family, and then keeps going to reveal a brutal plantation full of confederate flags, slaves, and soldiers keeping those slaves in check. It's a brilliant establishing shot set to an incredible score that continues on throughout the rest of the film. The ending of the film, as ridiculous as it is, contains some moments that are both legitimately intense and also incredibly satisfying to watch.

The film also has a lot of interesting things to say, even if they're told with the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the face. Taking things a little bit further than Get Out, Antebellum attempts to explore and reveal the way in which far right groups in America secretly desire a return to the days of slavery and brutal subjugation of African people, and presents a nightmare version of what might happen if they are allowed a space all to themselves. In the context of the rest of the film, the opening segment almost feels like a subversion of this sort of slave movie, indicting it as a sort of LARPing experience for white people to torture and subjugate Black bodies once again, rather than being any sort of legitimate exploration of the past. Does Antebellum do a good job at exploring these concepts? Not really. Does it try? Definitely. Is it a good film? No. Is it interesting? Definitely.

Antebellum is like if Jordan Peele was interrupted on the set of Get Out by an entire other movie crew filming a slave movie for white people and then someone drove a freight train through both sets with Janelle Monáe standing on top giving a Black Lives Matters speech on a megaphone. It's undoubtedly a complete disaster, but it's so surreal and ridiculous and also kind of badass at times that it's impossible - at least for me - to not enjoy watching it on some level. This definitely won't be the intelligently written, expertly crafted horror sleeper hit of the year that we've been getting for the past few years (there actually hasn't really been one quite yet, though I'm still holding out hope for Candyman and Saint Maud), but I wouldn't be surprised if it developed somewhat of a cult following in the years to come.