Antebellum Movie Review

When i saw the trailer for antebellum i
was really intrigued especially because
they touted it from the producers of get
out i loved that movie i thought it was
just
so powerful i love the message love the
story building the world building
just the not even the twist but the
message that it had within it i
absolutely loved it so i'm excited to
check out antebellum when it finally
comes out
well 2020 hit and it got delayed well it
is finally now available
on demand but should you rent it
a successful author finds herself in a
terrible reality
and has to figure out how to survive
janelle monae is the star of this and
she does a pretty good job for what
she's
given throughout a lot of it she doesn't
have any lines of dialogue so everything
that she is doing all of her emotions or
anything else
she just has to convey through her body
movements through body language even
just facial expressions
now luckily some of the cinematography
allows some some really good shots of
her because it frames it so well
puts her front and center and just
really up close sometimes
so it's very intimate so that we do
truly get to feel
the distress the anxiety the fear the
terror the anger
all of these things directly from her
cinematography also is great in a lot of
other shots because it just it's
beautiful to look at
and we get we get some grandeur and
size and scope
of some of the landscapes but then we're
also put into the the close quarters
we get some decent development on
janelle monae's character so we
understand some of her motivations or at
least who she is
we can feel some sympathy towards her
everybody else though pretty much in
this
there is zero character development i
mean we don't know any of their
motivations we don't know what is
causing them
to behave that the way they are and some
of them we don't know how they got there
why they got there why they were chosen
for a particular role
others we don't know why in the world
did you choose
to participate in this why did you
choose to come here and then what is the
end game
in this i mean what do you get out of it
the beginning of this film is very
brutal i mean right out of the gate
there's no warming up to it it is just
terrible right at the beginning i mean
just some brutality
some horrid violence and it's very
disgusting to watch really and this
builds the world that we're about to be
entered into but as i'm watching this i
want to know
okay where is this going to lead i mean
you've shown me this terrible thing okay
so we're setting up this is kind of the
reality
that we are in and then it progresses to
show more
and more just devastation towards people
but is there a point to it i mean is
there a reason that you are really
setting this up now if you saw the
trailer then you've already seen
way too much of the movie i mean i think
that they showed
just too much of the story within that
trailer and didn't leave anything for
the directors kind of to
leave up their sleeve as more of a twist
or more of a turn or a surprise
i mentioned how i did like the
cinematography i thought it was a really
beautiful a lot of it
towards the end of the movie though i
got a little bit tired of some of the
techniques that they were using because
a lot of it
was happening in slow motion and so it
was just it
it played it out too long and it was
like trying to be
overly dramatic or trying to be dramatic
and it was overly dramatic it was just
it was ruining any type of yay
feeling or success or any type of
resolution
it was counteracting that we spent a
good portion of the film setting up this
world that we're in and we get to see
just how terrible it is and how how the
people are
just horrible individuals one of them
played by jenna malone
is almost comical i mean not funny
comical but
just she's over the top she's she's
absurd
in how she behaves and so it was a
little off-putting
not only just because her character is
meant to be off-putting but then just in
general on
the behavior of the character i mean as
as jenna malone is acting it out
it took me out of the movie because i
kind of was like oh you're not even real
i mean you're
you're like this caricature of somebody
like you've seen this bad person now
you're going to make them bigger
and just not really working one thing
that i did enjoy at some points that
those that were speaking
would be cut off that you wouldn't see
them because they
they almost became an everyman
that it didn't really matter who was
saying these terrible or these
disgusting things
because it could be applied to anybody
and really what we were then focusing on
is the recipient of those messages and
they were full frame i mean they were we
got to see their facial expressions
what the words were doing to them now
unfortunately i don't think this movie
really
had a point or an ultimate message to it
i mean i mentioned
you know that at the beginning that this
is from the producers of get out and
i loved that movie because of the
message that it had i mean it had a
twist to it
but it also had explanation it told us
why
these bad people that we already knew
were bad were so bad
what they were doing why they were
trying to do this and it just it added
so much to the story well we don't get
any of that in
antebellum what's unfortunate about that
then is it makes
all of that violence and terrible things
that we saw
at the beginning of the movie for a
large portion of the movie
not really have a point other than to
just show that hey there was violence
and it's bad and these people are bad i
don't think this is advancing any type
of
thought process advancing any type of
message or critical thinking
or really even any type of discussion i
do think it had the opportunity
to create something like that to really
to to be a discussion starter
but i don't think that at the end of it
the people that have seen it are really
going to all go
well yeah i watched it it was okay and
then it was kind of pointless
there is some good use of imagery
throughout this and it is
dark and it is disturbing and had they
not shown certain things
in the trailer i think i would have
enjoyed parts of it
more than what i did but regardless of
what i saw in the trailer the story
still didn't deliver
a decent message this is available right
now on demand
and realistically i wouldn't spend the
money for it regardless of how much
it is on which platform that you choose
i mean if you want to wait till it hits
a streaming platform like netflix or
amazon prime or you know either hbo or
any of those type of things that you're
already paying for
so you're not paying extra to see it
then you might want to give it a watch i
mean it's like an hour and 40 something
minutes long
uh some of it goes by a little slow
because it takes a time to build this
world and i don't mind that
i don't mind that it was doing that it's
just at the end of it
i felt like it did waste my time because
it didn't give me a message it didn't
give me
even a punch in the gut where i feel
like oh wow
maybe i should just take some time truly
to re-examine
what i believe but none of that came at
the end of the movie there's a
mid-credits scene i'm not even sure it's
mid
credits i mean they show like one or two
credits and then boom it goes
into some other video and even that
i think yay it's supposed to be kind of
a way
we did something we had a positive
impact
and it's still kind of pointless and i
think that you can spend
better time watching something that will
challenge you
that will move a conversation forward
and it will be better for us all
there is s3x but no nudity a lot of
profanity
and some terrible horrible violence
including sexual violence
i give antebellum two and a half out of
five couches
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