Antebellum
- Review Crew
- Sep 25, 2020
- 2 min read
By John Sapienza
Antebellum’s first trailer was released around 6 months ago and had an original release date in April. However, the film was finally released on Amazon Prime Video Friday, September 18th. I have been anticipating this film since the beginning due to the credentials of the production company that made other great horror films like Get Out and Us. The film centers around Veronica, played by Janelle Monáe, who is an author and a civil rights leader. After things go awry during a business trip, she finds herself forced to confront the terrifying, racist history of the United States. Janelle Monáe has a great performance and really carries most of the film cast wise. Everyone else is okay, but no other memorable performances. I will be blatant and say that I did not enjoy much of this film. The narrative is quite slow. I feel like they did this on purpose to try to build suspense, but all it did was make the first half drag on. However, as soon as the climax happens, everything is rushed. They had to squeeze the most exciting part of the movie into about 16 minutes. A redeeming quality of the film is the plot twist. I thought it was original and surprising, but the fact that everything was so rushed after the reveal made it hard to thoroughly enjoy. I felt like the cinematographer was the only person on the crew that wanted to make a beautiful film. I was more enthralled with some of the shots then I was with the storyline for 90% of the film. Lastly, I went into the film with the impression it was going to be a horror, because it was the same production team worked on Get Out and Us. However, it was not scary in the slightest. I felt like I was watching a historical drama rather than a horror film. Overall, I expected much better coming from the same production company that made Academy Award-winning films like Get Out and BlacKkKlansman. This concept had so much potential to be explored, but Antebellum just scratches the surface of what could have really been an all-time classic. If you have the opportunity to view it for free then I recommend watching it, but I regret the $19 I spent renting it on Amazon Prime Video. If I had to describe the movie in one sentence: An extremely poor man’s Get Out.
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