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ANTEBELLUM – Nate Wonder and Roman Gianarthur
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Building off the success of movies like Get Out and Us, writer-director Jordan Peele has begun to inspire a new generation of African-American filmmakers to explore genre stories of horror, sci-fi, and fantasy. On television, the HBO series Lovecraft Country has blended 1950s racial drama with a myriad of lurid tales involving covens, monsters, demons, and so much more. Playing concurrently in cinemas (or, at least, it would have been had it not been for COVID-19) is Antebellum, the debut feature of writer-directors Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz. The story is arguably the most horrific nightmare imaginable for contemporary black Americans; it stars Janelle Monáe as Veronica Henley, a successful author and sociologist, who wakes up one morning to find herself living as a slave on a cotton plantation during the American Civil War. Forbidden to speak and treated brutally by the white slave owners, Veronica must come to terms with what is happening to her, and figure a way out before it’s too late. The film co-stars Eric Lange, Jena Malone, Jack Huston, Kiersey Clemons, and Gabourey Sidibe, and received mixed reviews from critics when it opened, despite its pertinent themes relating to racism, the lived experience of the black community in contemporary America, and what has been called the ‘American original sin’ of slavery. Read more…
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