'Antebellum' Review: Janelle Monáe-starrer with commentary on race heralds new horror genre about social evils
Spoilers for ‘Antebellum’
First things first, whatever idea of ‘Antebellum’ you have in your head, thanks to its fantastic trailer, you should put that aside. Because the horror feature, written and directed by Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz, is nothing like what you can imagine it would be.
The story starts in what appears to be a cotton plantation during the Civil War. We see Confederate soldiers enforcing rules on Black slaves, torturing them, and even killing one for trying to escape. It seems exactly like one would imagine White supremacist soldiers to behave. We see a slave called Eli (Tongayi Chirisa) getting beaten up. We see a slave woman named Eden (Janelle Monáe) getting tortured and branded by a man who looks like a high-ranking Confederate officer played by Eric Lange. The officer later even rapes Eden.
And the film takes a sudden twist from there. Just as Eden shuts her eyes in pain, she wakes up in a different time altogether. She’s now Veronica, a successful academic who writes and talks about the intersection of race, gender, and class structure. Veronica has a beautiful life. She has a loving husband (Marque Richardson), an adorable child, and fame -- from appearing on television news regularly.
From one of her talks, Veronica visits Louisiana. Over there, things get weird. The hotel staff treats her differently. They behave strangely with her, almost reminiscent of how Daniel Kaluuya’s character was being treated by the Armitage family in ‘Get Out’. After the session, Veronica goes out for dinner with her friends. After dinner, when she takes a cab, she gets abducted.
We then return to her life at the plantation, her attempts to silently cope with the oppression, and her long-standing plans to escape with Eli and others. It is near the end of the film’s third act that we realize that Veronica (or Eden) is not caught in a time-loop of any kind. Instead, she is still very much in the 21st century. She and the other Black folk there are being held captive by men who like to play Confederates. At long last, after another captive Julia (Kiersey Clemons) dies by suicide after suffering a miscarriage from the torture, Veronica decides that she will have no more.
That night, she and Eli attempt to escape. They even find a phone and manage to send their location. But Eli loses his life in the process. An enraged Veronica then kills several Confederates, before finally escaping her prison, which turns out to be an estate called “Antebellum”, that boasts to be Louisiana’s largest Civil War reenactment park. She escapes the Civil War prison, only to see people -- normal people -- still waving the Confederate flag high.
The film’s commentary on race is as hard-hitting as it is unsubtle. The film takes note of several ongoing topics, especially around the continued usage of Confederate iconography, like the flag and the statues of Robert E. Lee. But what strikes hardest in ‘Antebellum’ is just how it brings to attention subtle themes of cultural assimilation under the guise of a seemingly-ludicrous situation.
Monae and Chirisa and Clemons shine in their roles. But the real show-stealer comes in the form of Jack Huston, who plays the evil Confederate soldier, Captain Jasper. His cruelty feels almost too real to have been acted, which is scary but makes for a fine performance. Lange, too, plays his part almost too well.
‘Antebellum’ just like ‘Get Out’ will be a film that will cause controversy. For starters, it will irk White conservative commentators who will probably call Monae’s cathartic murders of Confederate soldiers a revenge fantasy. But ‘Antebellum’ is anything but a revenge fantasy. It is a carefully crafted film that is meant to make audiences uncomfortable.
Like ‘Get Out’, it is a film that can’t just be called horror. Both films require the introduction of a new genre that takes psychological horror and mixes it with social commentary and uses hyperbolic ideas to help identify the horrors of society in general. ‘Antebellum’ is undoubtedly one of the most thought-provoking films this year.
‘Antebellum’ is available for viewing on-demand.