Genre: Drama/Fantasy
Director: Ava DuVernay
Writer: Jimmy Ellis
Based on the novel by Octavia Butler
Cast: Lupita Nyong'o, Chris Pratt, Domhnall Gleeson, Brendan Gleeson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Octavia Spencer, Trevor Jackson, Nicole Beharie, Zoe Kravitz, Aml Ameen
Plot: June 9, 1976, Dana’s (Lupita Nyongo’o) thirtieth birthday. Dana and Kevin (Chris Pratt), who were recently married, move into their new home in the suburbs. Kevin has unpacked his office, and Dana is unpacking books. Kevin comes out of the office to talk to Dana. He tells her he has writer’s block. Dana gets dizzy. The room and Kevin disappear before her eyes, she finds herself in some trees. In a nearby river, Rufus, a young boy about five, is drowning. Dana rushes into the water and drags the boy onto the riverbank, where she resuscitates him. The boy’s mother is hysterical (Jennifer Jason Leigh), she screams and strikes Dana while Dana saves Rufus. A man, the boy’s father (Brendan Gleeson), appears and shoves a gun in Dana’s face, demanding to know what is going on.
After another dizzy spell, Dana finds herself back in her own apartment. She panics. Kevin grabs her by the shoulders and demands to know what happened. He says that Dana disappeared for just a few seconds and then reappeared in a different place in the room. As Dana tells Kevin what happened, she remembers some details, such as the pine trees near the river and the woman’s Southern accent and strange clothes. Dana concedes to Kevin that the incident could have been a hallucination or a dream, but she is fairly certain it was real. She worries that if she returns to the scene, she will encounter the father pointing a gun at her. Kevin points out that the father owes her thanks for saving his son’s life. Dana is not so sure.
As she and Kevin eat dinner in the kitchen, she feels dizzy and gets whisked away.
Dana finds herself in a bedroom. A boy stands in front of burning drapes, holding a charred stick. Dana puts out the fire. The boy turns out to be Rufus; he remembers almost drowning a few years earlier.
Rufus says he set fire to the drapes because his father beat him. He shows her awful welts on his back, and she notices old scars underneath the fresh wounds. He tells her that they are in Maryland, and that it is the year 1815. He says his last name is Weylin and confirms that he has a young black friend, named Alice Greenwood. When Dana hears these names, she realizes that Rufus is her ancestor. Rufus tells Dana that she would be safe at Alice’s house. He helps her sneak out of the house, and she helps him destroy the charred curtains.
Dana makes her way through the fields and woods. She has to duck out of sight to avoid encountering a patrol of several young white men on horses. She follows the men to a cabin in the woods. She watches as they drag a black man out of the cabin and tie him to a tree. The men whip the black man and speak rudely to his wife, who is standing in the yard with her young daughter. One of the patrollers takes the black man away. Another punches the woman’s face. After the white men leave, Dana calls out “Alice,” and the young girl looks in her direction.
Dana helps bring Alice’s mother to consciousness and then tells her that she is a free woman in need of help. Alice’s mother tells Dana that the beaten man, her husband, is a slave of Tom Weylin, Rufus’s father.
Dana returns to her home, and Kevin is there. She refuses to tell him what happened until after she has slept.
They wake, but, Dana gets dizzy, and Kevin holds on to her. In that way, he travels back to the South with her. Rufus has just fallen out of a tree and broken his leg. He is with a young black boy named Nigel, whom Dana sends to the house to get help. Rufus asks who Kevin is, and Kevin tells him that he is Dana’s husband. Rufus is shocked. They tell Rufus that they come from California and the year 1976. He does not believe them. They tell him a bit about history to come and then show him coins with the date stamped on them. Rufus decides he does believe, even though he doesn’t understand. Dana asks him to tell no one besides Nigel. She also gets him to agree to pretend that Kevin owns her.
Tom Weylin, Rufus’s father, arrives to get Rufus. Kevin and Weylin have a private conversation. Rufus begs his father to allow Kevin and Dana to come with them. Weylin agrees and offers to let them stay at his home. When asked, Dana tells Weylin that they are from New York. At home, Margaret Weylin, Rufus’s mother, rushes to see Rufus. Dana is sent outside for dinner. Dana meets Carrie, the mute daughter of Sarah (Octavia Spencer), the cook. Sarah despises Margaret. A man named Luke questions Dana about her origins while the group eats a dinner of cornmeal mush. Nigel asks Dana why she talks like a white person, and Dana tells him that her mother was a teacher. The slaves react to this story with scepticism and warn Dana that Weylin already resents her educated speech and the fact that she comes from a free state. They say he worries that Dana might give the slaves ideas about freedom.
Carrie slips Dana some bread and ham, which Dana eats with gratitude, although she worries about sanitation. Sarah tells Dana that her husband is dead, and that Carrie is the only one of her four children whom Weylin didn’t sell. Dana marvels that Sarah, who cooks the Weylins’ food, has not poisoned Mr. Weylin yet. Kevin comes for Dana, and they talk. She explains that she is worried he will be left behind if she gets dizzy when he is not around. Weylin has hired Kevin to teach Rufus while he recuperates. Kevin has told Weylin that he is a writer from New York and that he bought Dana because he thought her education might be useful to him. He also implied that he is sleeping with Dana. He warns Dana that Weylin resents her education. Dana hopes she and Kevin will be able to prevent Rufus from turning into his father.
Weylin forces Dana and the other slaves to watch him whip a man for talking back. One day, Margaret asks Dana where she slept last night. When Dana admits that she slept in Kevin’s room, Margaret slaps Dana. Remembering the whip, Dana does not answer back or defend herself. In the cookhouse, Sarah reveals that she hates Margaret because it was she who insisted on selling away Sarah’s children in order to have more spending money. She warns Dana that Margaret wants Kevin and that she dislikes Dana because Dana has him. She advises Dana to make Kevin let her sleep in the attic with the other slaves again. She also advises her to ask for her freedom while she is still pretty enough to make Kevin listen.
Dana continues to sleep with Kevin. One morning, she bumps into Weylin as she leaves the bedroom. He winks at her, and Dana feels ashamed, as if she’s Kevin’s whore. After catching Dana reading in the library one day, Weylin tells her to stay away from books when she’s not reading to Rufus. Nigel, who is thirteen, asks Dana to teach him to read. She asks him whether he understands the danger involved. In answer, he shows her his back, which is scarred from the whip.
In the cookhouse, Dana finds Nigel teaching Carrie. He says that Sarah doesn’t want Carrie to learn for fear that it will get her whipped or sold. Dana agrees to teach Carrie, but not where Sarah might catch them. As she gets up to burn a spelling test Nigel has just passed, Weylin comes in. Enraged that Dana has been reading, he drags her outside and whips her. She gets dizzy before Kevin can make it to her side.
Dana wakes up at home in present time. Kevin is not there. Although she is in terrible pain from the whipping, she manages to bathe. She packs a bag of things she might need back in the South. She feels disoriented, unable to reconcile the past with the present. She spent two months in Maryland, but less than a day has passed at home.
Dana slips back to the antebellum South. Rufus (Domhnall Gleeson), is fighting with a black man who turns out to be Alice’s husband, a slave named Isaac Jackson (Trevor Jackson). Rufus has raped Alice (Nicole Behari). Dana wonders if she is pregnant with Hagar, Rufus’s child and Dana’s ancestor. Isaac knocks Rufus unconscious, and Dana intervenes to prevent him from killing Rufus, asking him to consider what will happen to him and Alice if he doesn’t restrain himself. He takes her advice and runs off with Alice. Alice, who recognizes Dana, says that Kevin went somewhere to the North.
Dana hopes to give Isaac and Alice enough time to get away. When Rufus comes to, he threatens to retaliate against Isaac, but Dana urges him not to. Rufus says he would have married Alice if they’d been born in Dana’s time. Dana realizes he loves Alice, even though he raped her. Rufus agrees to lie and to say that white men beat him.
On the Weylins’ property she sees Carrie (Zoe Kravitz), who is heavily pregnant with Nigel’s child. Nigel (Aml Ameen) takes Dana and Weylin on a cart to find Rufus. Weylin is impatient with his son.
Rufus is running a fever, so Dana gives him some of the aspirin she brought in her bag. Nigel tells Dana that the doctor can’t come yet, and Weylin has ordered her to stay the night with Rufus. He also says that Rufus hired a preacher to marry him and Carrie. Dana thinks to herself that no slave marriages are legal, whether performed by a preacher or not. Nigel says that Weylin now understands that Dana is a time traveler, and so does he. He asks whether it was Isaac who beat up Rufus, and Dana nods. In the morning, Dana and Rufus share breakfast. They discuss Weylin. Rufus calls him a fair man. Dana thinks to herself that he’s not fair, but neither is he a monster. He is just an ordinary man who does the things an ordinary man of his time is supposed to do. For the first time, Rufus questions Dana’s youthful appearance. She explains that when she returns home, mere days pass for her, while years pass for him. Rufus shows her a few brief letters from Kevin and agrees to send Kevin a letter Dana writes.
The doctor comes and speaks insultingly to Dana. Rufus finds a book on slavery that Dana brought from 1976. She realizes that people crucial in African-American history—Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner—could be compromised if this modern book falls into the wrong hands. Worried about what his father will do if he finds it, Rufus makes Dana burn it.
Alice and Isaac are caught on the fifth day after their escape. Alice has become a slave because she helped a slave escape. Rufus goes to town to buy her, asking Dana for some aspirin for her before he leaves. Rufus brings Alice home. She is a bloody wreck. Weylin will not pay for a doctor to treat any slave, so Dana tries to help her at Rufus’s request. She asks for salt water, which Rufus fears will hurt Alice, but Dana shows him her own back with its healed wounds to prove that soap and brine work.
Nigel doesn’t know whether Rufus mailed the letter. He says people laughed at Rufus for paying so much for Alice, who was half-dead. Although Nigel wants to try to run away again, he feels grudging gratitude to Rufus, who saved him from being sold South. When Alice wakes she questions her past.
Alice asks Dana whether she, Alice, is a slave. After warning Alice that she might not want to know the answers to these questions, she tells Alice about her history: Because she helped a slave escape, she was made a slave herself. Alice then remembers Isaac. She wants desperately to get to him, but Dana reminds her that she wouldn’t get far in her weakened state. Dana hears the cries of Carries baby.
Weylin gives Nigel some clothes for his newborn son, Jude. Dana overhears Weylin telling Rufus that buying Alice was a waste of money, because he will have to whip her severely to get what he wants from her. Rufus asks her to talk Alice into sleeping with him. Dana resists, but she worries that even if Alice refuses to go to him willingly, he will simply resort to rape. Rufus abuses Dana on the subject of Kevin, suggesting that maybe Kevin wants to be with “his own kind.” Rufus tells her that his father thinks he should just sleep with Dana. Rufus says he would cut his own throat if he ever found himself wanting Dana.
Rufus is mostly kind to Alice, although he gets drunk and beats her at least once. Dana plans to run away, but fear prevents her from doing so immediately. One night, Alice shows Dana the letters she wrote to Kevin. Rufus never mailed them. That night, Dana runs away. Almost immediately, the Weylins come looking for her. Rufus drives her out of the bushes where she is hiding, and Weylin kicks her in the face. She loses consciousness.
When Dana awakes, she is bleeding and riding along on the back of Rufus’s horse. He stops, wipes her face, and unties her after she promises not to struggle. He puts her in front of him on the horse. He tells her to lean on him before she falls off, and she does. As they approach the house, Rufus tells her she will be whipped. Once off the horse, Dana resists, terrified, scratching and bruising Rufus, and Weylin ties her up, strips off her clothes, and beats her senseless. Dana tries to time travel by telling herself that her life is in danger, but in her heart she knows that Weylin is punishing her, not killing her. Dana wonders whether she will find the strength to run away again. She realizes that despite her superior education, she managed to escape only for a few hours, while Alice escaped for days.
It turns out that Liza, the cleaning woman, was the one who told Weylin about Dana’s attempt to escape. She did it because she hates Alice, and Dana saved Alice’s life. The other slaves beat Liza badly to punish her for betraying Dana.
Kevin sent a letter to Weylin telling him he is coming and would like Dana to know.
Kevin rides up. He is furious to hear about the whipping Weylin gave her, and he wants revenge. Dana convinces him they should leave. She turns to say goodbye to Alice, but Alice refuses to acknowledge her. On the road, Dana and Kevin run into Rufus. When they won’t agree to stay, he turns a gun on them. Dana provokes him until he is on the brink of shooting her. At the last moment, Kevin falls on Dana.
Dana and Kevin arrive back in 1976. They make love. Kevin seems lost. He tells Dana that he felt most at home on the Weylin plantation. Against her will, Dana feels the same way. Kevin’s newly acquired accent reminds Dana of Rufus, and her house reminds her a little of the Weylins’. Kevin says he grew his beard as a disguise, because a mob was after him for helping slaves escape. He cannot remember how the TV or typewriter works. He grows increasingly upset and lashes out at Dana. Dana gets dizzy, and Kevin runs for her bag.
Dana arrives at the Weylins’ alone. Rufus is drunk and lying facedown in a puddle. Dana turns him over and fetches Nigel, who carries Rufus to the house. Weylin, looking old and frail, tells her that as long as she continues to save Rufus’s life, he will allow her to stay. Dana says if he beats her again, she will stop looking out for Rufus. Enraged, Weylin orders her to go tend to Rufus. He says if anything befalls Rufus, he will flay her alive. She believes he means it.
Rufus is trembling. Nigel says that he has malaria. Dana tells Nigel to put some mosquito netting around Rufus. She explains that the insects spread the disease. Rufus is sick for days. Dana tends to him, giving him aspirin and forcing him to eat. Dana learns that since she was last there, Alice has had three children by Rufus, two of whom have died. Her third child, Joe, is still living. Dana is pained to hear that Hagar, her ancestor, has not been born yet. The other slaves are cruel to Alice. They suspect that she enjoys being with Rufus. Rufus finally gets well. Weylin has a heart attack. Dana tries to revive him, but she can’t. Rufus accuses her of letting him die.
When Dana revives, Rufus is standing over her. At the house, she changes and dresses her wounds. She goes to Rufus’s room to get some Excedrin. He orders her not to leave, threatening to send her back to the fields if she disobeys. She stays. Rufus grows gentler and says he knows she tried to save his father. He says his mother is coming back. She is a laudanum addict, and he wants Dana to take care of her. Dana begs him to reconsider, and he says he will think about it. As Dana leaves, Rufus tells her she can read a book for the rest of the day, or do whatever else she likes. Dana realizes he would be shocked if she refused to forgive him whenever he did something to hurt her.
Margaret returns. She makes Dana read to her, clean her room, do her laundry, and sleep next to her on the floor. Her old temper seems to have left her, perhaps because of her opium addiction. One day, three of the Weylin slaves are tied up and taken away to be sold.
Dana encounters Carrie, who takes her to her own cabin. Dana laments that she saved Rufus’s life. Through gestures, Carrie says that if she had not, they all would have been sold to break up the estate. Carrie rubs Dana’s cheek and tells her that her black skin “doesn’t come off,” no matter what others say.
Rufus tells Dana to write letters for him to his creditors. She says in her own time, she avoided secretarial work, and he smiles and says Kevin told him that she was a writer. He offers her some paper to use as she pleases and says he doesn’t want to sell any more slaves.
One night, Dana and Alice are eating dinner in Alice’s cabin. Rufus comes home drunk and tells them that they are “only one woman.” He leaves. Alice asks Dana if Rufus ever sleeps with her, and she says no. Alice says she understands what Rufus means. He wants Alice to sleep with and Dana to talk to, and the two women look alike.
The slaves have a party to husk the corn. Rufus supplies good food and whiskey. A muscular slave named Sam says that it’s too bad Dana is spoken for. At Christmas, there is another party. Rufus asks Dana if she has her eye on someone. Looking at Sam, he says he would sell anyone she wanted to marry. He says Kevin is far away. Dana tells Rufus that his son is very smart, and Rufus starts to take an interest in is the boy. Alice wants Rufus to free Joe, and he says he will—in return for Alice’s affection. Alice thinks he wants her to be more like Dana. She tells Dana that she doesn’t trust Rufus, and that she will run away again after she has the baby she’s carrying. She asks Dana to steal some opium from Margaret to keep the baby quiet.
Alice gives birth to a daughter, Hagar. Dana is elated because Hagar is her ancestor, and she hopes she will no longer be called to the past to save Rufus’s life. A few weeks later, Alice asks Dana for the opium. She says she has to escape before she turns into Dana.
Dana tells Kevin what Carrie said about the slaves being sold if Rufus were to die. Kevin is surprised by Carrie’s smarts; he assumed she was mentally delayed. He says Dana has an easy decision to make. Dana asks what he wants her to do. He doesn’t say anything, and Dana demands to know how she can do it if he can’t even say it. The implication is that Kevin wants her to kill Rufus.
Dana is back in 1976 for fifteen days. She and Kevin are happy to be reunited. One day, though, he accuses her of wanting to go back to Maryland and asks whether Rufus raped her. She says that she is willing to seem like property, but she is not willing to be property. Dana says she worries that if she lets Rufus die, she will not be able to get home.
On the Fourth of July, Dana returns to the Weylins’. Rufus looks exhausted, but he doesn’t look much older. Dana has only been away for three months. Rufus leads her to the barn. Inside, she finds Alice, dead, hanging from a rope. Dana cuts Alice’s body down. Rufus returns and tells her that Alice committed suicide. Sarah tells Dana that Alice tried to run away and Rufus sold Joe and Hagar, driving Alice half mad with grief. Dana goes to Rufus and finds him holding a handgun. She wonders if she was sent back to prevent him from killing himself. Rufus tells her he didn’t really sell the children; he sent them to his aunt in Baltimore to frighten Alice and convince her not to leave him. Dana blames him for Alice’s death and says freeing Joe and Hagar is the least he can do.
The day after Alice’s funeral, Rufus takes Dana to town to witness him freeing his children. Joe now calls Rufus “Daddy,” instead of “Master.” Dana tries to convince Rufus to free all his slaves in his will, but Rufus says she might kill him if he does that. Dana hadn’t considered the possibility. Rufus says he has nightmares about her leaving him alone to suffer and die. She refuses to promise him she would never do such a thing. Rufus grabs her and tells her she looks so much like Alice he can’t stand it. She gets away and hurries to the attic, where she gets out her knife. Rufus follows her. He apologizes to her for the first time in their lives. He wonders aloud how long it will take her to stop hating him. He lies with his arm around her, and for a few moments she thinks it would not be so bad to sleep with him. Then she decides she can’t be his lover. She stabs him twice. He screams, and Nigel comes in. Rufus goes limp, his hand on Dana’s arm. She time travels home. Her arm is fused to the wall exactly where Rufus’s hand gripped it.
As soon as Dana is well, Kevin and Dana go back to Maryland in present time. The Weylin house is gone. They find a newspaper article describing the sale of the Weylin estate, including the slaves, after Rufus’s death in a fire. Dana figures Nigel set the fire to cover up her murder of Rufus. Kevin and Dana can’t find a record of what happened to Hagar and Joe, although Dana knows that Hagar lived long enough to be freed by the amendment to the Constitution. She can find no record of Nigel and Carrie’s sale.
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