Antebellum (Horror Movie Review)

Last Updated on October 14, 2022

PLOT: A woman must face the sins of the old while surviving the Confederate rule in the modern age.

LOWDOWN: I didn’t watch the trailer for ANTEBELLUM (WATCH IT HERE), as I try to go in as blind as possible for the movies I review. A few pictures and an IMDB synopsis is good enough for me. I sh*t you not, for the first third, I thought this was a Civil War-era revenge flick. Well played, film. Well played. After watching the trailer, I now understand what the general public understands, and I’m warning of mild spoilers ahead, but I’ll only discuss what’s in the actual marketing. Nothing else. So what did I think of ANTEBELLUM? Well, let’s start with the good.

The basic plot is a unique one. What if a bunch of bigots made their own slavery-type of WESTWORLD, minus any actual funding? How would it work, what would be its initiation process, and how would you keep it a secret? None of these get answered, but the idea is still one to ponder. We start on a plantation with Janelle Monáe’s Eden living in actual hell (or close to it). It’s a brutal start, with a sly one-take, giving us a sense of geography and the threat at hand. Almost dialogue-free (during the opening), Monáe gives a heart-wrenching performance; I questioned if I needed to stiffen up my drink just to get through the rest of the film. I get it, make the bad guys as vile as possible, so when the time comes, I’ll giggle like a schoolgirl as they suffer and die. Except that at the forty-minute mark, we flash to the present (2019, I assume, as people seem to be smiling and sitting close). Eden is a successful author with a hubby and a kid living the American dream. She has a giant house, money to spend, and is hosting a sold-out seminar. The Civil War era is revealed to be nothing more than a dark and vile reenactment.

The plantation isn’t in the past but on a big “secluded” plot of land, and Eden makes the mistake of getting into the wrong Uber and is forced into ACTUAL slavery. It’s messed up and idea-wise, an interesting path to go down. Jack Huston (who’ll always be the fantastic Richard Harrow) plays the evil scene-stealing Captain Jasper. You know you’ve played a great villain when you got me screaming at my TV. He gets the most screen time, and though he’s not the prominent Confederate commander, I feared him more than anyone else. Huston’s Jasper has some repressed anger that bubbles to the top, and you know he ain’t messing around. If you were to boil ANTEBELLUM down to a simple revenge flick about the evils of the Confederacy (I understand the North wasn’t clean as a whistle either) and some grindhouse comeuppance, then this would have worked a lot better.

I wish that we could have gotten more in terms of the “how.” This is a grounded tale without magic or sci-fi, so there should be some exposition explaining this sh*t-kicker playground (and that’s what this is, let’s be honest). The ending of THE VILLAGE made no sense because of the work, trust, and dumb luck that kept something like that a secret is comically impossible. We tread the same water here. There are around a hundred men involved in the plantation, some clearly in their early twenties, and no one bragged or got drunk and made a suspicious comment back in town? No one tried to use their pickup truck to get laid and slipped up about the ACTUAL SLAVERY going on two miles west? I’m not trying to nitpick, but once you get past the incredible cinematography, score, and damn fine acting, you end up putting down your scotch (as I did) and start asking some logistical questions. Questions that don’t have answers.

There is a message here (a big one), and who am I to say what that should be or how to execute it? But where ANTEBELLUM fails in its statement. The film’s middle section is the flashback portion, which shows us the present and Eden’s remarkable life. The level of comical stereotypes and microaggressions paired with exposition that sounds like political talking points seems EXTREMELY out of place. What directors/writers Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz want to say could have been done in a way that results in introspection. Instead, we get a particular dialogue that sounds like the type of VICE headlines you assume are written by The Onion yet are very real. They are a talented team and this could be studio meddling but I’m not sure if that’s what happened here. If this were going for an embellished sense of reality to get the point across, I would have liked it more, but this plays everything razor-straight, and it ends up looking goofy because of it. ANTEBELLUM wants you to “get” the message without trusting that the story alone will deliver it. If you spell everything out in such an over-the-top way, I will assume this is meant to be more of a satire than anything meaningful.

GORE: This had some minor blood and a nasty branding, but that’s about it. ANTEBELLUM is not about the blood or the gore.

BOTTOM LINE: I’m at a crossroads here because some things worked well, while others felt like they were out of a different film. The score is terrific. Roman GianArthur and Nate ‘Rocket’ Wonder added a lot to the sorrow and pulled at my heartstrings a few times. There is a gorgeous scene where Janelle Monáe’s Eden charges on a horse, brandishing a hatchet while screaming for her life; pair this with a beautiful string-section, and you got me. It’s here, and others like it, where ANTEBELLUM excels. I got the message of modern slavery and that it’s never-ending without the Huffington Post exposition. It becomes distracting and takes you out of the heart and soul of what is on the screen. In the end, the logistics of what is being presented make little sense, and though I can always suspend disbelief, a sci-fi twist could have cleared up several plotholes. Like THE VILLAGE before it, grounding things like this only shines a light on its mistakes. Regardless, Janelle Monáe’s Eden is on point and makes up for some ANTEBELLUM’S flaws. This film may work better for some, but for me, It’s just… eh.

You can catch ANTEBELLUM (HERE) on VOD, Friday, September 18th, 2020.