Antebellum: Caught in the trap of history

Antebellum opens daringly with a William Faulkner quote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past”, before offering a lesson from history – and the present.

Pitched somewhere between Jordan Peele’s Get Out and Westworld, this nightmarish science fiction alights in a southern plantation where brutal overseer Capt Jasper (Jack Huston) is threatening a slave couple with a gun and a rope. This is no ordinary plantation, but a “reformer plantation” where the slightest transgression or speaking without permission is met with violence meted out by the Confederate army.

A major plot twist later and it becomes something even worse.

Something’s not quite right, even in the circumstances. The sky is too azure, the cotton is burned after picking, and the Confederate soldiers sound awfully like Nazis. Here, a slave named Eden (Monáe) has learned to avoid creaking floorboards, pick cotton, and remain silent while she hopes for an escape, despite a desperate call to action from new plantation worker Julia (Kiersey Clemons).

Suddenly an anachronistic phone rings. Monáe, awakening from a dream, is transformed into a 21st-century academic named Veronica Henley. The respected author of Shedding the Coping Persona, a loving wife and mother, and a good chum to the effervescent Dawn (Sidibe, terrific as ever), Veronica’s fate slowly merges to discombobulating effect with that of Eden.

Antebellum similarly collapses the boundaries between past and present as it cleverly works in themes and topics such as intersectionality, Confederate monuments, and the rise of the American right.

The big narrative rug-pull isn’t quite as smooth as it ought to be, but there’s plenty to admire here, including Monáe’s expressive eyes, Pedro Luque Briozzo’s unsettling camerawork, and a thrillingly vicious turn by Jena Malone.

In cinemas and on digital release