Recent Emmy winner Julia Garner stars as Jane, the very junior assistant of a powerful film executive (no one ever says the name “Harvey Weinstein,” but the aim is clear) stuck in an increasingly unwell working environment. Kitty Green’s first narrative feature is replete with all the get-under-your-skin detail of her documentaries, and bolstered by her audience’s shared knowledge that while what they are watching on screen isn’t exactly a true story, its real-life parallels are unmistakable. While that might be a blunt thematic instrument, Bush, Renz, and their stars never flinch at the concept when they’re deep in a world in which slavery isn’t just the reality, but the chosen one, the horror is visceral. The past, it seems, is never very far away, a lesson that Monae’s Veronica has to learn in the most literal of terms.
How these two sides of the same role intersect is the movie’s big trick, and also what makes the movie unsettling as a whole.
Its twists and turns are best left discovered within that framework, but suffice it to say, the film follows Monae as two characters (maybe…?), one of whom is an enslaved woman in the deep South, and the other a modern striver with a successful career and wonderful family. 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre' Review: Leatherface Slashes Gen Z Gentrifiers in Bloody Sequel Jamie Lee Curtis Wraps Filming on 'Halloween Ends,' Bids 'Bittersweet' Farewell to Franchise After 44 Years Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz’s feature debut may lack subtlety, but often makes up for it with a bone-chilling terror that suggests everything onscreen is very real. The Janelle Monae-starring film is built on a relatively simple story, one partially obscured by chopped-up storytelling (once you’ve seen “Antebellum,” it’s relatively easy to rearrange the pieces into one coherent timeline, though the film itself does no such favors) and a handful of unnerving sequences that serve to throw both the audience and Monae’s character for big loops.
Here are 13 recent disturbing highlights. Many of the movies released this year are scary in unexpected ways, either because they tap into timely anxieties or illustrate the precise nature of terror in these uncertain times. If nothing else, the unsettling nature of a year that has been hobbled by both a global pandemic and a divisive election cycle (among other eerie twists) is a reminder that scariness comes in many forms, and the traditional horror formula that many of us celebrate on Halloween is just one piece of the equation. For much of the world, 2020 has embodied the exact traits of a well-crafted horror movie: twisted, uncompromising, and something nobody really saw coming.