Antebellum – definition ‘before the war’, specifically used in reference to the civil war.
Attempting to write a review for Antebellum without giving away spoilers is going to be difficult. Is there a twist? Yes. Can you figure it out on your own? Again Yes. Am I going to talk about it? No.
Antebellum stars Janelle Monae, a recording artist with a handful of movies to her name, including Moonlight, Hidden Figures, Welcome to Marwen and Harriet. Written and Directed by Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz.
The official synopsis: Successful author Veronica Henley finds herself trapped in a horrifying reality and must uncover the mind bending mystery before its too late.
The trailer and synopsis are very misleading. The trailer would have you think this is a dark supernatural horror movie. The official synopsis implies its a mind-bending mystery.
Despite what other reviewers have said, this IS a horror movie. While it does not have werewolves, vampires, aliens or masked killers, it does indeed have monsters in it. The worst kind of monsters,… human. The movie is set on a Civil War plantation, so there are scenes of abuse, torture, implied rape, and murder.
Antebellum is a difficult movie to watch because it shows us the absolute worst part of our American history, slavery. Horror movies that add the tagline, “based upon real events” somehow creep us out even more because events in the movie happened in real life, this is no different. While Antebellum doesn’t have that specific tagine, slavery DID happen and its not too much of a stretch to imagine the events in this movie actually taking place. While difficult to watch and probably not going to get a lot of repeat viewings, that doesn’t mean its a bad movie. In fact, its a pretty good movie. The only real issue I have, i won’t talk about here because of spoilers.
Janelle Monae is far and away the best thing about this movie. She gives an outstanding emotional performance. Don’t be surprised to hear her name a lot around award season.
