Premiering on September 18, Antebellum quickly became America’s most-watched video-on-demand movie — as well as one of the worst reviewed, with remarkably low satisfaction scores from critics and audiences. Many watched it, few liked it.

It’s not surprising so many gave it a chance — ever since writer-director Jordan Peele’s hugely successful Get Out, Americans have warmly embraced this new subgenre in which the black experience is rendered as a horror movie. He’s created a cottage industry of these projects, which includes not only the ones he’s involved with as writer-director (Us) or producer (Lovecraft Country), but many other film and TV projects riding the very wave he created.

We definitely need these stories to counter over a hundred years of American film history, especially those countless movies embracing the lugubrious “Lost Cause” narrative, mourning the collapse of a romanticized Southern neverland of noble Confederate soldiers, flirtatious plantation belles, and happy slaves — “a civilization gone with the wind.”