Lionsgate
Thanks to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the anticipated new thriller Antebellum suffered a theatrical delay and has found itself going straight to PVOD services, which should give more people the opportunity to view the film. The delay, in fact, probably helps deliver the film’s message in the wake of the controversy over all things Confederate, including the name change of the bands Dixie Chicks and Lady Antebellum, not to mention the dust up over HBO Max pulling Gone With the Wind from the fledgling service briefly to address the depiction of slaves in the film in the proper context. That context is fully on display in Antebellum. But what exactly is the movie about? That’s a little more difficult to address without revealing major spoilers, but I’ll be as spoiler-free as possible.
Antebellum tells two stories that will eventually converge, but are the stories being told in a linear fashion? The film opens on a Southern plantation where a couple of slaves are attempting to escape, their capture is brutal and their punishment (not seen but revealed later) is quite horrific. One of the slaves, Eden (Janelle Monáe), seems to be viewed as the Harriet Tubman of the group, trying to find ways to get the others away from the plantation safely. Eden’s work is nearly put into jeopardy with some new arrivals, putting Eden on the radar of Him (Eric Lange), who physically and sexually assaults Eden on a regular basis, and Elizabeth (Jenna Malone), his daughter, who has personally chosen all of the plantation’s slaves, except for Eden — chosen by her father, a relationship which makes Elizabeth extremely jealous. Eden’s situation with Him escalates to the point where she has to escape at any cost.
The second part of the story concerns Veronica (also played by Monáe), a successful self-help author with a loving husband and daughter, and a career that takes her on speaking engagements around the country. During one such engagement, Veronica meets up with her friend Dawn (Gabourey Sidibe) but begins to notice odd behavior of the people she’s dealing with from the hotel concierge to a restaurant staff. Veronica is also perplexed by a Facetime call she received from an unknown woman, who later manages to get into Veronica’s hotel room and pretends to be her Uber driver. That fateful ride plunges Veronica into a world of terror that she must also escape from at any cost. How the two stories dovetail will be up to the viewer to discover.
I have been looking forward to seeing Antebellum for some time now as it comes from the producers of Get Out and Us, although it should be noted that Jordan Peele is not involved, so you know it’s sure to deliver some kind of social commentary on race as well as include a whopper of a twist. It does on both counts. Considering all that’s been going on in the United States over the past few months, outside of the pandemic, Antebellum is sure to be a hot button topic in how it depicts the horrors of slavery. The workers on this particular plantation are not the jolly slaves of Gone With the Wind, they are made to work, they are fearful of stepping out of line, of disobeying the master’s orders to only speak when spoken to. Their lives are a real horror show. I don’t want to get political, but it’s unavoidable when a topic like this is presented in a film — white people need to see this. This is the truth of slavery, and sadly this attitude towards Black people continues today which is why we have movements like Black Lives Matter. It’s not that all lives don’t matter but when you have a group of people who have been marginalized from the time they arrived in this country, unwillingly, a spotlight needs to be put on the treatment they received then … and now. These portions of the film present some very powerful and disturbing images that will hopefully resonate with audiences who respond to BLM with ‘all lives matter’. Unless you are that person brutalized mentally and physically by a system that favors a population of people who aren’t you, then you don’t fully understand what others have gone through and are going through. In that sense, Antebellum is a movie that has some urgency to be seen.
Lionsgate
On the other hand, the modern day sections of the film are just there to add to the overall mystery of the story. As much as I like Janelle Monáe, I didn’t feel her performance was that great, for either character although she did bring a bit more intensity to Eden. As Veronica, she was just a bit flat, which made Gabourey Sidibe seem all the more over-the-top. So while the modern scenes were necessary to the mystery, they really didn’t mesh all that well because the past and present scenes were so tonally different (and not knowing exactly what’s going on until about midway through the film also makes the switch from past to present a little jarring). I did enjoy Jenna Malone gleefully chewing the scenery, and Eric Lange was a terrifying threat. Robert Aramayo’s character was a bit schizophrenic, at first seeming to be the compassionate White man on the plantation but out of the blue he turns brutal towards one of the slaves he was given to do with as he pleased for the evening. Of all the unpleasant moments in the film, that was probably the worst and felt like it came out of nowhere. Jack Huston was as terrifying as Lange though, and not someone you’d want to cross.
The film is well directed by Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz, but I found the structure a little confusing, for reasons I don’t want to elaborate on at the moment. It certainly has something important to say wrapped up in a thriller for the masses, but will the message get lost among the twist, and is Monáe’s performance strong enough to help deliver that message? Though not anywhere near as good as the somewhat similar in message Get Out, it makes a bit more sense than Us but will a wide audience accept the film or be insulted when confronted with the reality of our country’s past? That remains to be seen.
Antebellum has a run time of 1 hour 45 minutes and is rated R for disturbing violent content, language, and sexual references.
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