Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Antebellum’ on Hulu, an Overtly Provocative Brain-Bender About Racism Past and Present

Antebellum arrives on Hulu after a few months of being on VOD, but also in the wake of Black-experience triumphs Get Out and Us, and there may be no following them. And of course, those two films are referenced in the trailer (“from the producer of”!), which, if you watched it, well, maybe you shouldn’t have. Antebellum is an ideal blank-slate watch, all the better for it to surprise you. Whether it’s functional in its revelations is the question.

ANTEBELLUM: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: The golden hour: A little girl plays in a lush field. Horses. Flowers. A gorgeous white house. Confederate soldiers march by. Four Black women hang sheets on a line. White men in grey military uniforms chain a Black man in a yoke. His wife tries to flee. A horseman lassos her around the neck. A gunshot. “Your friends are dead because of you,” a white man in dress greys says to Eden (Janelle Monae). He throws her over a table and brands a circular logo on her back. She screams. Six weeks later, she and several other slaves pick cotton in a field as more Black folk are trucked in. A woman (Jena Malone) in an elaborate dress prods the new arrivals. The sounds of war rumble in the background. A cadre of Confederate soldiers marches through the property with torches, chanting, “Blood and soil. Blood and soil.”

Veronica Henley (Janelle Monae) wakes up to her phone ringing. A wake-up call. She has a flight to catch. Her husband (Marque Richardson) makes breakfast for their daughter (London Boyce) in their spacious kitchen. He turns his tablet screen to Veronica, showing her the clip of her appearance on a news-talk show: She assertively debates a white man about institutional racism. Veronica chats online with a woman (Jena Malone) she’s never met, assuming it’s an interview for her recently published book; the woman throws out casually racist “compliments” and says she hopes she hasn’t “triggered” Veronica. She slams the laptop shut.

Veronica travels to New Orleans to speak at a conference. Her voice and statements are powerful. She stays in the Jefferson Suite; the white receptionist is chilly to her when she makes restaurant reservations. She meets with her friends Dawn (Gabourey Sidibe) and Sarah (Lily Cowles) for dinner, and Dawn shows no tolerance for subtle racial slights or the white man who tries to compliment her with a sad vodka-cran. Meanwhile, on the plantation, Eden tolerates yet another rape, is prodded by recent arrival Julia (Kiersey Clemons) to DO SOMETHING and tests which floorboards in her shack creak the least.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: M. Night Shyamalan’s 12 Years a Slave with some Tarantino-isms and Midsommar vibes.

Performance Worth Watching: Monae is nothing short of a force. Between her and Sidibe’s spirited, comically righteous touch, it sometimes seems as if they have a shot at saving the movie.

Memorable Dialogue: “Mommy, why was that man so angry?” — Veronica’s daughter, while watching the TV debate

Sex and Skin: Implied sexual brutality.

Our Take: I’m trying to avoid the spoilers here like Eden steps over squeaky boards. Obviously, Something’s Up, since some cast members are playing roles in each scenario, and the “blood and soil” thing — a Nazi chant — is clearly an anachronism. Mum’s the word, but yes, a Shyamalanian twist is at play here, although writer/directors Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz differentiate themselves by negotiating a hairpin turn at the end of the first act, then seeking a slow-burn reveal. It’s compelling, but stops us cold as we start hypothesizing in lieu of absorbing a new set of details. That’s the film’s best shot at setting the hook, but only if you’ve hung on after a series of brutal scenes of slavery and cruelty that seem all too grueling in 2020 — scenes of questionable taste that are more justifiable in a humanist piece like 12 Years a Slave than within the shaky narrative gimmickry of Antebellum.

It’s not much ado about nothing, though. Bush and Renz aim to bridge racist opera of past and present, and illustrate how the overt became the subtle: nothing has changed except the tone and method. The lust for domination still exists, and it’s embedded deeply in American life. The laws were written by white men. No argument there. But the film ultimately short-shrifts its characters in its overly calculated provocation; Veronica spouts a few lines about the patriarchy and institutional racism, but the film never truly goes deeper. Veronica is clearly a powerful Black woman, but is frequently little more than a cypher for the plot’s humdinger twist. Only the small rebellions deployed by Sidibe’s character — she absolutely disembowels the vodka-cran guy — feel rewardingly real.

From a technical standpoint, the film is extraordinary. A flashy tracking shot gobbles up all the details of an Antebellum plantation in its first scene, and establishes a vivid color palette, sumptuously photographed by Pedro Luque. Visually, Bush and Renz do as Jordan Peele and Ari Aster might as a directorial dream team, and Monae is a rock-sold anchor. It’s the writing that fails here, undermining Civil War- and modern-era struggles with a disappointing finale copped from a ’70s exploitation picture. The movie ends on a note of simplistic reckoning that aims to quench base desires, but just seems… violent. And not in a satisfying way.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Antebellum is more messy than ambitious. At first it seems like two different movies, and you’ll piece it together into one just in time for it to become a different movie at the end.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Watch Antebellum on Hulu