Film Review: Antebellum

The Horror is That There is No Horror Just Pretentious Wokeness

As a declaration, I had grown weary of movies involving slavery, and seeing another black woman wearing that red pattern scarf on her head just didn’t excite me. Movies about slavery is a no-go. Halle Berry played one wearing the requisite scarf and I didn’t like it. I refused to watch 12 Years of Slave because how many times can you keep telling a variation of the same story? I placed those feelings aside and decided to check out Antebellum based on how it was promoted. The trailer showed promise of something different with the genre. It hinted that it would be something on the horror spectrum. Little did I realize that this would become something of a very false narrative.

Lionsgate’s Antebellum opens up with a moving shot of some plantation filled with slave quarters. I would have to give credit to the location scout for finding some very realistic slave quarters even if they are refurbished and restored to their past horror. We see what amounts to life on a southern plantation that’s being held in the custody of confederate soldiers along with the madam of the plantation, Elizabeth, played wickedly by Jena Malone, and her young no-name daughter played by Arabella Landrum. Most of the events in this scene is typical slavery action of them recovering a runaway slave and that aftermath. In this mashup of action is Veronica / Eden, played by Janelle Monáe. You can hardly recognize her as she is not lighted properly in these initial scenes.

As this scene continues, you as the viewer are trying to figure out what is going on, and did they cut out some scenes to jump to this point? It seems like we have just dropped into the middle of a scene without any context as to how we got to this point. It’s confusing as you question the ability to comprehend. Your only obligation is just to sit back and wait for some sort of transition to take place and after 39 minutes, you finally get the overdue shift in the storyline.

Veronica/Eden wakes up from a sound sleep next to her husband. Was this a dream? The directors and writers are playing fast and loose with the story and with you. They misdirect and lays out false premises to the story. In this particular story arc, we get to know more about Veronica/Eden. Veronica is a Ph.D. doctor whose life is surrounded by the trappings of someone with class and distinction that comes with the accolades of having a professional and successful career. She has a daughter who comes attired with the finer things a kid blessed with having parents who are successful.

As the layers unfold surrounding Veronica’s life, we slowly come to the conclusion that Veronica is a pretentious snob that she wears like a badge of honor. Everything that she does, everything that she speaks, everything that she wears permeates with the stench of fame, money, clout, prestige, privilege, and hubris that she is totally oblivious to. All of this is amplified by her friend, Dawn, played by Gabourey Sidibe. With these two women in the room, they suck all of the air out of the room with their snobbery. If this was a movie about the ugliness of people’s souls, it would have been a better exploration into horror as these two did not fare well in the realm of likable characters. Dawn berates an admirer at a restaurant that is so devastating that you felt empathy for the guy who had to stand there and get a dressing down from this woman because he sent a drink over to her only to get verbally humiliated by the Sidibe character.

At this point, you have no investment in Veronica and Dawn to root for. Early on, Veronica was speaking at a symposium and it was just boilerplate black talking points with put-downs on the patriarchy. There was nothing new here nor any sort of twist on the tired rhetoric heard so many times by so-called Black Lives Matter talking heads. As with a lot of movies with female leads in these last few months, the demon of wokeness rears its ugly head once again. It’s gotten very tiresome as many film-goers have gotten tired of what they’ve been seeing. At some point in time, we will look back at this time and examine the impact woke culture has done to the film industry and to the financial bottom line. It seems as if the directors and writers still haven’t learned a thing after seeing what happened with Terminator: Dark Fate, Birds of Prey, and Charlie’s Angel, to name a few. We’re at the 2/3’s mark at this point and the writers and directors have decided to let us in on the story.

You see, this isn’t a horror story at all. It’s a kidnapping story. The directors and writers have played a game of three-card Monty, a shell game of where is the pebble? It’s not all about racism, it’s about a class system masquerading as racism and it definitely not a horror film. The trailer where we see a figure walking in a reverse crab position was actually Veronica escaping her captor. The culmination of the ending is typical and unremarkable. At this point, you still don’t have any feelings to root for Veronica. She’s an empty unsympathetic character through and through. She eludes her captors, she somehow doesn’t get struck by any of the bullets being shot by an automatic weapon. The biggest target they could have hit was the horse she was riding on and they failed to do that. By the way, Veronica is an accomplished equestrian based on the photos of her in full dressage competition, how Mary Sue of her.

I have to give it to the directors, you made a trailer that enticed your audience to check it out but you failed in the product. I should have gone with my first instinct and avoided the film based on the premise. Shame on me.