Worth: $9.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Janelle Monáe, Eric Lange, Jena Malone, Jack Huston, Kiersey Clemons
Intro:
…overwrought, unpleasant melodrama with a half decent twist…
Racial themes have been a part of genre films for as long as there have been genre films, but it certainly feels like they’ve been on the increase lately. That’s not surprising considering the tumultuous times in which we live, and quite often the result is a more cerebral, evocative movie.
Jordan Peele’s one-two punch of Get Out (2017) and Us (2019) managed it well at the cinema, and the recent Watchmen continuation by Damon Lindelof and the superb Lovecraft Country deftly paired racial themes and solid storytelling on the small screen. We’re mentioning these examples of allegory-heavy media done right, just so we can juxtapose it with new horror flick Antebellum, which offers an unpleasant crash course in how to do it very poorly indeed.
Antebellum is a film that serves as a vehicle for a big twist. It’s not a bad twist, mind you (although it’s straight out of an M. Night Shyamalan movie we won’t name because it would give the game away), but it’s revealed before the halfway mark and it sucks the air out of the whole thing. Up until that point, the story of a slave, renamed “Eden” (Janelle Monáe) is grimly gripping, albeit one note and disturbing to the point where your humble reviewer (who has cheerfully watched Cannibal Holocaust) was beginning to wonder what was the bloody point of it all.
The thing is, if you’re making a revenge film, you need to set up the fact said vengeance is justified. Antebellum does this and then some, but when the much-deserved retribution finally arrives, it feels limp and muted. This gives the entire film a profoundly unbalanced feel, and makes the journey initially distasteful and ultimately unsatisfying. Django Unchained, for all its flaws, did a much better job at executing the promise of its premise, whereas Antebellum feels like it has loads of shocking racism to show you… and that’s about it.
Directors Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz know how to showcase a beautiful-looking flick. The roaming camera, the sequences captured in a single take, the effective framing of action all show a considerable grasp of the craft. Story-wise, however, Antebellum is a bit of a mess. Is it a well-intentioned mess? Possibly. Does it contain a great performance from Janelle Monáe? Absolutely. Is it a film you should go and see? Unless you’re in the mood for overwrought, unpleasant melodrama with a half decent twist but fuck all to say? Nah, mate.
