Antebellum Reviews

Summary Successful author Veronica Henley (Janelle Monáe) finds herself trapped in a horrifying reality and must uncover the mind-bending mystery before it's too late.

• Drama

• Horror

• Mystery

• Thriller

While Antebellum is no zombie movie, it treats systemic racism as a kind of contagion that refuses to die, eating the brains of successive generations. There’s only one way to stop it, and that’s by blowing the minds of all those infected — which is precisely the impact Antebellum achieves.

The star works valiantly to channel Eden/Veronica's pain and confusion, and the whole humanity of a life her captors so casually dismiss. As a performer, she commits utterly; if only the story could do the same.

MIND BLOWING. **** my mind is just like omfg. dude i can not get over how crazy this movie is.

You gotta watch this like Inception and when you put it together holy moly frenchman Parker first name Tony this is good!!!!!!

It’s refreshing to see Monáe show what she can do as a lead, and her performance as Veronica possesses a wit and savvy that complement the performer’s natural poise.

Unfortunately, there’s a gulf between a great idea and competent execution, and this first feature, from writer-directors Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz, can’t bridge it.

It’s an audacious swing — but ultimately a miss from a pair of filmmakers who know exactly what they want to say, and haven’t yet mastered how best to say it.

Written and directed by Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz, and propelled by the charisma of Janelle Monáe, it lines up moments of possible insight and impact and messes up just about all of them.

Though the filmmakers hoped to balance the historical atrocities of slavery with contemporary racial oppression, Antebellum — yet another unnecessary slave movie — rarely feels like a horror flick. Instead, its needless brutality, ropy character work, and misguided twist make it easily 2020’s worst movie so far.

Absolutely amazing movie. It’s a work of art! Can’t remember the last time I watched something this powerful

I really liked the idea but I feel like they screwed up the reveal. How much better would the twist be if it came in final 15 minutes of movie. We waste 35 minutes in middle of movie getting character development on people who don’t even matter to the real story. The writing is pretty meh for some stretches. The micro aggressions that we are all pretty much aware of at this point are too exaggerated it makes me wonder if the writer has ever experienced one or just read about it on theroot

"Antebellum" is a tough movie to watch AND review. It's depiction of slavery is brutal, but the twist that brings it into genre territory is badly timed and ultimately disappointing.

Story could have been so much more but seems to focus too much on "evil slavery". Like sure there were slaves and it was bad but I'm not here to watch a documentary. Not emotional enough, maybe due to the writing it just bad direction. Something I will forget quickly.

Save yourself the watch, obviously a movie created to add to BLM narrative. But awfully delivered. I should have seen the ratings before wasting my time with it. The twist was absolutely crap. Got **** in with the “from the producers of Get Out” everything after Get Out has been trash. So is this..

Women Film Critics Circle Awards

• 2 Wins & 4 Nominations

ReFrame

• 1 Win & 1 Nomination