Yup, I'm still doing these things. It's been a while, but we're back.
This is a new horror movie about a modern writer who seemingly finds herself back in the times of slavery somehow. This was billed as something like other recent black-centric horror films like Get Out. But that isn't really accurate in the least.
SPOILERS AHEAD!
We start right off in the thick of it – slavery times, complete with some Confederate generals killing a few slaves trying to run away. The main character is Eden, who we see subject to a horrific branding at the hands of this one guy. It’s all hard as fuck to watch. You’re really just sitting there at these parts going boy, this must be building up to some really grand point to make us watch all this horrible torture and killings; I wonder what cerebral, intelligent things this movie is going to give us to make up for showing this!
One girl is pregnant and asked to go and fuck this one soldier, who is made fun of for not being able to talk to her. At first it seems like she’s going to be OK and maybe make a connection with this guy, maybe he could get her out or something. Nope! He goes apeshit and hits her a few times, including kicking her in the stomach. What a completely heinous scene to watch. All these scenes with the Confederates are only gratifying if you picture these guys having bad things happen to them. Get creative! Maybe this guy always feels like he left his oven on and is thus never at peace with the world.
Eventually, after like 30 minutes of this horrific shit, we switch gears and the main girl wakes up in bed, a successful writer named Veronica, living in the modern times with a husband and a kid and everything. Wow! What kind of unpredictable twists are we gonna see to make sense of this? We get a few fairly nice scenes of the family doing regular stuff, which are really just relieving because I didn’t need to see any more fucking slavery scenes. You could have showed paint drying and it would’ve suddenly seemed like a relief.
There are a few weird things happening, though – what’s up with the strange Southern white lady who Skypes her and says a bunch of cryptic stuff? I dunno, and neither does Veronica. And what’s up with the strange little girl in period clothing who says cryptic stuff to Veronica in the hotel elevator later like “you shouldn’t be talking”? Boy, white people sure are cryptic, huh?
Then there’s a scene where the mysterious Southern lady from the Skype call enters Veronica’s hotel room while she’s away and uses the toilet without flushing apparently. And these fucks think they’re the superior race… please…
There’s a fairly elongated scene of Veronica and some friends at a restaurant, in which one friend schools this guy trying to buy them drinks because he sent over something other than champagne. Personally if this happened to me I’d cut my losses and go find someone else to talk to. I dunno. These scenes are well-acted and all, I guess, but the pacing is so slow. It’s like the pacing of waiting for your mom to finish talking to a friend at the grocery store. Get to the fucking point!
Leaving the restaurant, Veronica gets in a weird Uber where the driver cranks up the music super loud and, on the phone, she finds out that there wasn’t an Uber called for her after all. That sends the panic flaring. This is one of the only really effective scares and it’s barely even a scare. The one Confederate jackass pops out from the back like a fucking Freddy Krueger scene and slams her head against the window.
Aaaaaand here’s the big reveal – the whole thing never took place in the 1800s. Actually it was all just in modern times and a bunch of jackass rich people kidnapped black people to simulate slavery, like the world’s most repugnant Civil War reenactment. Why would you want to pretend to live in the 1800s with no electricity, modern toilets, etc? Seems miserable as fuck even if you’re the one in power. I guess the racism is such a powerful drug that they’re willing to wipe their asses with tree bark and sweat all day for it. Anything to own the libs, right?!
Long story short, Veronica kills all the racist conservatives – one of whom is actually a politician, surprise surprise. It’s gratifying to watch her burn them alive and then punch that one white lady in the face a bunch of times. But really, this was what it was building up to? All the torture, rape and whatnot, all for a few passable scenes of violence against the bad guys? That’s kind of like setting your house on fire and then throwing water on it, expecting to get accolades and praise. It wasn’t worth it.
Also, the characters were pretty much undefined. What did we even know about any of them? No real distinct traits aside from racism (for the white characters) and not wanting to be a slave (for the black characters). What a masterpiece of literature.
What was the message here, anyway? Slavery was bad and there are racists in the U.S. who want to keep black people down? Not exactly deep, and the film doesn’t say anything unique or layered about what to do or what the root of the problem is. The twist is that everything was taking place in a section of a preserved plantation owned by this politician guy. How did they kidnap that many people and force them to comply? Were they drugged or threatened somehow? How did nobody with a conscience know about this and stop it almost immediately? The politician guy would’ve had to take a fuckload of time off work to come role play. But hell, a lot of conservatives don’t care about shit as long as their guy is suitably racist, so touche, movie.
Mostly it just seems like an excuse for aimless racist violence. I get it, sometimes art has to show uncomfortable truths. But the second you revealed that plot twist and nothing was actually taking place in the past, what the fuck was the point of any of this then? Mostly torture porn and pointless violence against black people, it seems.
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