20 Horror Movies Ruined By TERRIBLE Reveals
17. It's Set In The Modern Day - Antebellum
The marketing for Antebellum led many to believe that it was a sci-fi horror film about a Black woman, Dr. Veronica Henley (Janelle Monáe), being kidnapped by a racist cabal in the present day and sent back through time to a Civil War-era Southern slave plantation.
It was nothing if not a bold premise, though the trailers rather slyly mispresented the film in order to preserve its actual climactic twist.
At the end we find out that Veronica has actually been imprisoned within a modern day Civil War reenactment park, whose owners kidnap and enslave Black people for their own sick amusement.
This was just so much less interesting than the whole time travel angle teased by the marketing, ultimately making the film feel like an especially mid Black Mirror episode rather than a provocative, heightened sci-fi riff on the horrors of racism.
Considering that the present day twist didn't work out so well for M. Night Shyamalan's The Village, it's frankly surprising that any filmmaker would dare recycle it quite so brazenly.