The early trailers gave the impression that writer/director duo Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz’s Antebellum was a riff on Octavia Butler’s classic sci-fi novel Kindred. Though the two attempt to tread similar thematic territory, and there are a few other similarities, that’s really where the parallels end. While Antebellum is a gorgeous film to look at, and has admirable goals in mind, it misses on most accounts, falls into all-too-common traps, and the end result plays like an overlong episode of Black Mirror.
