Antebellum is out today.

For members of the media, Antebellum begins with a message from filmmakers Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz, priming the audience for what it is about to watch.

The film had been slated for theaters before the pandemic pushed it to VOD, but Bush and Renz wanted to talk about more than just the scuppered big-screen release of their directorial debut.

In the video, they bluntly proclaim their ambitions in making Antebellum, which were no less than to construct “the movie of and for this moment.”.

Few directors rush to position their work as didactic, but Bush and Renz, who come from a background of advertising and PSAs, describe Antebellum as “medicine” tucked away in entertainment.

It’s not unlike the preface Bush and Renz give to Antebellum — supplemental material meant to insist the accompanying film has a point it doesn’t manage to make during its run time.

The Blumhouse production centers on people who’ve been kidnapped to be tracked and killed for sport, and it became a big story after news leaked that the chosen prey are referred to by a character onscreen as “deplorables.” That rich liberals are the villains didn’t matter — The Hunt was the focus of a furious right-wing media cycle and some presidential tweets, all for a film that ultimately shrugs and declares both sides of the aisle bad.

When the film finally came to theaters in the spring, its studio tried to capitalize on the scandal with the tagline “The most talked about movie of the year is one that no one’s actually seen.” Lockdown cut its promotional cycle short before anyone could assess whether its efforts to treat all attention as good attention worked out.

Film isn’t a limber medium, and it isn’t the most innately responsive of formats, not with the time it takes for a feature to be written, funded, shot, and assembled.

It’s with a certain amount of serendipity, for …instance, that Antebellum arrives alongside renewed conversations about Gone With the Wind.