Antebellum

Before reading please note there are SPOILERS! Antebellum, one of the most recent black horror films released last year in September, didn't get the attention and respect it deserves due to theatre closures, election distractions, and 2020 in general. Directed by Gerard Bush & Christopher Renz, Starring Janelle Monáe, Jena Malone, and Gabourey Sidibe, this film is jam packed with layers based on slavery, racism, rape culture, classism, fascism, white supremacy, and the parallels of the past and the present. 
I went into watching Antebellum with a vague understanding of the plotline. To my knowledge, the trailer showed us a story of a black women who were supernaturally sent back into Antebellum (pre Civil War) times and were trying to figure out how to get sent back to the future. Needless to say, I was wrong. 
Antebellum does an exquisite job at setting up the story allowing the viewer to believe they are watching a movie that is solely based during the United States period of slavery in Louisiana. The subtle clues they give the viewer of the actual timeline come back to slap you in the face three quarters of the way through the film. Janelle Monae's performance as Veronica is fantastic as she takes you through gut wrenching and inhumane scenarios. In the whole length of the film, you can sense Veronica always having to keep herself, daughter, and lady friends safe from her surroundings. 
Once I realized I was watching a story that completely takes place in the present, I felt more pain from the narrative. Part of what the creators are trying to convey is that this Antebellum camp the rich white people are running, so that they can play pretend slave owners, is actually similar to the current times we live in conjunction to black & brown people who are disproportionately pipelined into the prison-industrial complex, in addition to how American society and media treats people of color, especially the last four years of white nationalist/supremacists being able to openly express their racist views and mindsets in the general public and through politics. Antebellum is a film that connects the abhorrent factual history of US slavery with the current repulsive and exploitive state of racism and treatment of people of color today. As Veronica's character rode horseback escaping the fictional Antebellum slavery camp, killing Elizabeth with the Robert E. Lee statue, into the Civil War reenactment scenes, then through the white tourists back towards her life as an accomplished writer, she quickly threaded the importance of how the past is strongly linked to the present in a few quick minutes of beautifully dramatic revenge.