Critics last month gave Antebellum a less than warm reception. One critic I know called it the worst movie he had seen this year. I was dreading this.
Antebellum is at least not the worst movie of 2020. However, it is very far away from its goals of being another Jordan Peele-esque social commentary masterpiece. Certainly, if Antebellum is a failure, it is not for lack of ambition. Neither can I call this a bad-looking movie. It is not poorly acted either. Jena Malone gets to put on a wacky accent and chews the scenery in big Southern gowns. I wish I saw whatever movie Jena Malone thought she was making. This is a handsome well-made production with big ideas that ends up too miserable to be watchable.
The plot is about Eden (Janelle Monáe), a slave on a brutal plantation during the Civil War. (So this is technically not "Antebellum", which means "Pre War". This is just Bellum. Whatever.) Her life is, as you might guess, unpleasant. We get to watch her be raped several times. She gets to watch her friends get raped or set on fire. Men in the fields picking cotton are tortured by the evil White captain (Jack Huston). Meanwhile, somewhere else, Janelle Monáe's other role is Veronica Henley, a 21st century feminist author at a seminar. How do these two link up? Honestly, you probably can call this twist. Ultimately, the horror elements pale in comparison to the nightmare of a straight historical drama about this subject.
I don't think we needed a movie like Antebellum. We do not lack for honest and unflinching depictions of the actual sad history of slavery. 12 Years a Slave exists and is a better movie too. Sure, we should never forget how bad slavery was. But what are we doing to ourselves here by watching this stuff again and again? Are we getting some sick pleasure out of people being tortured on an industrial-scale? I'm not saying that we need to rewrite or ignore history like Karens who demand their Gone With the Wind fantasy plantation weddings. However, I don't know what we are gaining anymore with movies like this. We definitely do not need to "wake up" to racism in 2020. Fucking check the news one time and I think you get it.
As a horror movie, Antebellum needs to be especially careful to not seem like it is exploiting real history for cheap scares. That means it has to be grim and joyless. Get Out had plenty of comedy to lighten up the horror and social commentary. Antebellum does not. It is as harsh as last year's The Nightingale - with about as many rape scenes. But that really gets to the bigger problem. Antebellum has nothing interesting to say. It is digging up wounds that are plenty raw already, while not exploring any new elements of American culture. The Nightingale showed the dark root of Australia's settler past which is too often ignored. Get Out brilliantly mocked "ally" liberals who still exploit Black people with a big friendly smile. They're both more important and more interesting movies. Antebellum has nothing to satire and no new history to cover. Why are we here.
Finally, Antebellum is just a bad horror movie. Only one scene even tries to be scary. All the other scene just try to be... awful. Horror can be wonderfully fun. It can be fun while being bold and transgressive. It has a way of shattering taboos, similar to comedy. But to get there, you need to be over-the-top. You need to be somewhat ironic about it so you can sneak in your darker unspeakable point. The Purge 2 has you celebrating the heroes butchering billionaires by the end. A classist message got snuck in by the end. Antebellum is not that. It is blunt and clumsy. The worst movie I saw last year was the Black Christmas remake, a movie's whose feminist politics I completely agreed with. But Black Christmas had no fun with its message. It felt like another angry Twitter argument that gets us nowhere. Antebellum sometimes feels that bad. Other times it feels bad because you just watched yet another rape scene. Oh joy. Merry times for all in here!
So don't watch Antebellum. Instead watch the 2004 Robert Englund movie, 2001 Maniacs. That is stupid slasher gore movie about a group of horny Yankees who are murdered in hilarious ways by crazy Southern Rednecks. You might even learn more about the state of the world watching that.
Next Time: Tetsuo 2: Body Hammer (1992)
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