Starring Janelle Monáe but undone by its own tepid twist, 'Antebellum' is high-concept horror from the producers of 'Get Out' and 'Us.'
Monáe certainly deserved to anchor a far better film than this. With a tinge of speculative sci-fi horror, Bush and Renz initially set up something with grander potential.
From its first moments, “Antebellum” roots itself in a sickly familiar dread. The film opens on a quote from— “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” — before a showy single-take shot by cinematographer Pedro Luque brings an ugly slice of America’s past to life.
From there the first act’s unrelenting brutalities unfold, and the film racks up a chilling parade of verbal, physical and psychological abuses inflicted on Eden and her compatriots, including the heartbroken Eli , who urges her to plan another escape, and new arrival Julia , who bristles against Eden’s reluctance to rise up against their captors.
The monsters of “Antebellum,” white villains who get off on the silence and subservience of their Black prisoners, drip with a honeyed evil, from mercurial overseer Captain Jasper to the controlling plantation owner, known as “Him” , who rapes Eden nightly in her own bed. Jena Malone walks an expert line between razored, genteel condescension and hateful resentment as a poisonous Southern belle named Elizabeth, arguably the film’s most fearsome character.
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