Yesterday, the trailer of “Antebellum” was finally released three months after the first teaser. Unfortunately, the 59 seconds look didn’t offer much, but it surely left me bewildered over what the film is going to be about. Starring Janelle Monáe, the trailer takes you back and forth between two entirely different timelines and periods, and leave you very little to understand, which would ultimately intrigue you towards it more and more.

Premise

The film’s premise reads:

Successful author Veronica Henley finds herself trapped in a nightmarish reality and must find a way to break free of the horrors at hand.

The premise is not enough for anyone to take something meaningful out of it; however, since it’s a horror drama, one can expect that the protagonist is going to face some ugly things. Let’s take a dig into the trailer to figure something out of it.

Trailer

The trailer starts with protagonist Veronica Henley (played by Monáe) taking an induction. The first shot has Henley on stage with her introduction on the screen behind her. It says Henley is a sociologist, an activist, and New York Times, best-selling author. The people in the induction are all of the African descent or some looks like Asian or Puerto Rican, but none of them is Caucasian. 

Now, here in her speech, she says, “We are the future. Our time has come”. This possibly indicates how people of different ethnicities have now made a name for themselves in the United States despite a harsh history of slavery and prejudice against black people.

Henley is then seen as having hallucinations and visions that she does not understand. It includes one of a young girl. She is then grabbed in her car by an unseen force, and the trailer cuts to pre-Civil War America. Henley is now a slave in some American cotton fields. In 12 Years A Slave and Django Unchained, we have previously witnessed how American cotton tycoons used slaves to manage, to pluck, arrange, and dispatch cotton for them. The scene from Antebellum will remind you of similar film instances.

Now starts a series of cuts between the author Henley and the one who has been enslaved. We get a glimpse of a woman whipped by a white guy in the fields as these horrors frighten Henley in the real world. Between these back and forth cuts, we also see Kiersey Clemons, who asks Henley, “What is the Plan?” to which Henley replies, “We go tonight.”  And then, again in between shots of the present and the past, we see the salve Henley burning down a church before the trailer ends

Trailer Analysis

It doesn’t look apparent at first, but when you see, one thing is confirmed – the film is set in two different periods. The title itself is a proof of the same. “Antebellum” is referred to as an era before a significant war. It is most commonly attributed to America before the Civil War broke and ended with the abolishment of slavery.

Now, let’s take the film’s tagline –  What if fate chose you to save us from our past?

Who is Henley saving? You can very well hear her hatching a plan. Maybe she’s going to get the salves out of their misery.

This is what I can figure out- Henley is an activist who works for reforms for black people, which can be figured from the opening shot. She’s obviously famous. Now she somehow suffers the pain of the black people enslaved years ago during Antebellum and her another consciousness resides there, planning to free the people of her race.

Surely, this is not a parallel story. We can see Henley having hallucinations of the past. So, it’s the same person stuck between two realities.

Film May have Elements of Psychological Thriller

The film is produced by Sean McKittrick, who has previously produced Get Out and Us with Jordan Peele. Peele also directed previous installments. Both films dealt with two different psychological/social elements. They were Racism against black people (Get Out) and the duality of human beings (Us).

We can see a blend of both in Antebellum. Since the protagonist in the trailer is shown to have hallucinations, there can be a factor of questionable reality of her visions. The monsters of this horror drama could be the racists who continue to haunt the protagonist in two different realities.

Verdict

It’s too soon to conclude obviously, but from the essence of the trailer, we can rest assured this is going to be a unique approach towards the subject of Racism. It looks intense, and given the length of the trailer, it’s definitive that a lot is hidden and is not disclosed.

To watch what’s happening with Henley, wait until April 24, 2020. This will be Lionsgate’s other horror drama besides Aneesh Chaganty’s Run.

Antebellum is directed by Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz and stars Janelle Monáe, Eric Lange, Jena Malone, Kiersey Clemons, and Jack Huston in leading roles.