Antebellum: My take on the movie with spoilers!

 

PLOT SUMMARY: Bestselling author Veronica is trapped in a terrifying reality and must use her wits to survive. 

It was said that if you know your history, you will never repeat it. The reason you are taught history is so you can learn from the mistakes made in the past and make sure that those errors that tormented people are never repeated.

It makes sense to be in awe of bygone eras though. Erase the tyranny and the genocides and the hate crimes, and the suppression of certain groups of people, I can imagine people must long for the simple life where there weren’t too many issues cropped up by modernization.

No internet, no urgent need to pry in people’s private lives, no desperation to see how many people liked your post and then getting depressed when you didn’t reach your target approval rate. No phones. No need to contact anyone if you don’t want to. Visits to friends if they’re not neighbors was often an arduous task made on foot or horses and took a long time.

Yes, times were simple and there was an era where the economy wasn’t on the brink of collapse. People led simple lives and had simple needs. But as they say, change is constant and it must come.

The most important and beneficial movement was Equal Rights for everyone. It took a lot of hard work but we are now almost at a stage where people, regardless of race or gender, are being treated equally. Almost.

Of course, there are some people who cherish the past and their mistakes and think the leaders who suppressed and killed certain groups of people should be hailed instead of hated.

Antebellum is a movie about exactly this prejudice. It shows the pain of a particular ethnic group and the mindless torture they endure.

ANTEBELLUM Movie Plot 

The opening scene, which seems like a one-shot, is beautiful in terms of cinematography. What we see is the brutal disregard of African-American people’s welfare. The soldiers are dressed in civil war uniforms, the slaves are dressed in plain clothes and the women are wearing long dresses.

The fields are vast and there is no sound except for the cries of the people who are suffering and gunshots. The corpses are then dragged across the field against the backdrop of a lavender sky.

Such a beautiful place, such a heinous crime.

A couple is separated by the soldiers, the woman is lassoed and shot. The husband screams and cries but is head-butted and dragged back to work on the fields.

A woman is being punished for trying to run away and the commander who is inflicting this punishment on her asks her name. She cries out her name is Eden before she is branded by her master.

The next day she has to work in the cotton fields, and the husband who has lost his wife keeps bothering her and asking her when they are going to do it again. She asks him to wait. She’s too tired and broken and has given up on trying to escape.

New slaves are brought in and the Captain gives his speech of the honor the slaves are receiving to work on the cotton fields. Eden watches it all wearily while the confederate flag flutters in the wind.

One of the women is named Julia by a little girl whose mother approves her choice of name and then sent away.

Julia has supposedly heard that Eden has been making plans to escape so she approaches her and tells her she is pregnant. Eden reiterates she is tired of trying to escape this place. Yet, just minutes ago she was seen stepping over floorboards trying to check which ones squeak.

Julia is thrown out of the cabin when she calls out Eden for being a coward and that she doesn’t deserve to be called a leader.

At dinner, the commander comes in to deliver a speech to the soldiers about joe amazing they are and congratulates all of them for winning the battle.

Eden makes a face and is concerned when the commander leaves with telling the soldiers to do whatever they wanted with the slave women. One of them immediately calls Julia but fumbles while speaking to her. She is told to go into the cabin and wait by the captain.

The soldier comes in and Julia tries to be nice and asks his name. The soldier, embarrassed by his shortcomings turns violent and asks how dare she even talks to him. He hits her hard and warns her to tell everyone he had his way with her. Then he kicks her stomach and Julia cries out in pain. The soldier turns skirmish and runs away.

The next day, Julia limps to the fields and is warned by the captain to never be tardy again and she was excused for today because he thinks one of the soldiers kept her late. Julia collapses, clutching her stomach and then screams as blood rushes out of her. She has miscarried her baby.

Eden’s friend distracts the captain from punishing Julia for making a scene and is instead punished himself for clearing out the shed which is an incinerator for rebellious slaves. He is told that his wife was there too. He goes to clean the shed, finds a necklace his wife used to wear and weeps.

The next day, Julia is nowhere to be found and the captain threatens to give her severe punishment. Eden grows concerned and has an inkling of what must have happened because she rushes to the cabin where Julia is only to find her hanging from the ceiling.

That night, Eden is taken against her will but she doesn’t put up a fight. The Commander goes off to sleep while Eden closes her eyes to dream.

She finds herself in the modern world. She’s in a bed and beside her is her husband. She’s Veronica Henley, a bestselling author who is vocal about her cause for the rights of black people.

She has a daughter and a supportive husband and has been invited to attend a conference. Everything is going great for her. She has backaches but there are no branding marks.

She has a video call from a woman called Elizabeth who makes remarks about her lipstick color matching her skin tone. Veronica is defensive and makes a face because she feels like she’s being subjected to racism. She ends the call abruptly when Elizabeth has nothing to ask her about her latest book.

She goes down for breakfast and her husband is watching an interview she did with a man who attacks her beliefs but she manages to win the debate. Her daughter asks why she’s fighting with the man and why don’t they resolve their differences and become friends. Veronica assures her that she hopes they will become friends one day.

She heads to her conference, gives a riveting speech and is applauded. Her friends come over and drag her to dinner. Veronica has made a reservation at the hotel restaurant and thinks she’s not taken seriously because of her skin color.

Over here it did feel she was being overly biased. The receptionist just happened to receive a call at the same moment Veronica had come to speak to her. It may be an innocent mistake to interrupt her or perhaps the receptionist wasn’t trained well. It wasn’t necessarily a racist attack.

While she’s not in her room though, Elizabeth breaks in and steals her lipstick because she really liked the shade and can’t buy her own. She also purposely messes up her room and before leaving, turns the door sign to do not disturb instead of clean my room.

When Veronica reaches the restaurant to meet her friends, they are shown a table near the corner where dirty dishes are kept. Veronica’s friend makes a fuss and walks to another table. So far, it still doesn’t seem like a racist thing considering there are other black people sitting on decent tables.

Seriously, why do restaurants even have a table next to where they are going to lance dirty dishes or ones that are near the bathroom? No one is going to want to sit next to a stinking bathroom.

Veronica’s friends want to take her to a bar afterwards but she claims she wants to go back home to her daughter. Then she goes on to tell her friends about how her room wasn’t clean even though she had put up a sign for the room cleaner. The friend who is not of the same ethnicity as Veronica claims her room was spotless. Veronica rolls eyes and exchanges look with her other friend. She thinks her room was purposely messy because she’s black.

Did Veronica not see that the sign was changed to “Do not disturb” when she went back to her room? She could have thought she had put it up accidentally. Not everyone is racist and Veronica was overly defensive. Sure some of the people she was debating against were attacking her beliefs, but not everyone thought her race was inferior. She could have just called room service and told them to clean up the room and if they argued, placed a complaint.

Veronica gets into her Uber ride after dinner is over, not even bothering to check if she was getting in the right car or not. Her friends get into the next car and are off to have fun.

Veronica gets a call from her Uber driver telling her she’s still waiting. Veronica tells her she’s already in the Uber. 

Loud music is still blaring on the radio and Veronica has to tell the woman driver several times to lower the volume. Eventually, she sees the rearview mirror and it is Elizabeth putting on her lipstick. Veronica is attacked from behind and has her head butted against the window.

She awakens as Eden and the commander next to her gets up when he gets a call on his cell phone.

ANTEBELLUM Ending Explained with Spoilers! 

Turns out, Veronica/Eden isn’t in the civil war era but in the same year and has been kidnapped by people who wanted to recreate a terrible period for the blacks.

Veronica spies on the commander and realizes he’s hiding a cellphone in the horse’s saddle.

The next day she informs her friend that she’s going to try to escape again. He isn’t an ordinary slave but a professor in the modern world.

That night, after the general is asleep, Veronica tiptoes and steps over creaky boards. Along with the professor, she steals the phone only to fumble and let it fall. The soldiers come and pick up the phone and the professor knocks them out to retrieve the phone. They make an emergency call only for the call to get cut and realize that only facial recognition can unlock the phone.

The professor and Veronica go back into the cabin. Months of stepping over creaky boards were for nothing. They enter and are immediately attacked by the General. The professor is killed while protecting Veronica. Veronica sheds a tear before killing the general and then using his face to unlock the phone.

She calls her husband and sends him her location and tells him to call the police.

She runs but runs into Elizabeth who tells her that she hadn’t picked her but her father had. Veronica isn’t amused that Elizabeth stole her lipstick so ties a rope around her neck and drags her on the horse. She makes sure her head bangs against the statue of Robert E Lee. Elizabeth dies and Veronica gives the statue a look as if blaming it for everything.

She rides with the horse and comes to a civil war enactment park called Antebellum. The enactment is already taking place. Gunshots, smoke, and war cries fill the atmosphere.

The police cars arrive, on time for a change. Investigations are taking place almost immediately. Veronica is free, and the shot implies that the African-American has attained liberty from their captors once again and are no longer slaves.

Antebellum has an interesting twist but that’s the only impressive part of the movie. There’s too much prejudice on both sides. The scenes especially don’t show a balance in behavior of different races.

Veronica is always on the defense and thinks anyone who disagrees with her is because of her skin color when it could be that she has a tendency to show a little attitude sometimes.

It also seemed a little implausible that there were so many people kidnapped and held in a park and only Veronica was the one ready to plan escapes while the others were content to pick cotton and wash clothes.

That kind of suppression and conformity would be believable if this was taking place in the civil war era. But it is not. How was it that Veronica was unable to round up everyone and convince them to escape?

Just the threat of being killed made so many people succumb to pressure and give up on trying to fight their captors? They weren’t even in handcuffs and there was usually just one Captain roaming the fields with a shotgun.

Veronica, who a well-known speaker was unable to convince the other captors to escape rather than give in to the ridiculous demands of their captors?

For the sake of the surprising twist, the other’s behavior makes sense. Otherwise, it seems a bit strange that the other captors were ready to let the others treat them like slaves. Unless they were simply actors not realizing there were actual people kidnapped among them.

Scare scale: 2.5/5