“This is a lot.” That’s Gail Bishop (Regina Hall) near the end of Master—and she’s not kidding. A horror exercise that begins as a haunted-house movie, brings in a witch, has psychological-thriller elements, and heavily underlines it all with social commentary about racism in elite academia, the movie never coalesces into something wholly captivating. The best parts involve Gail, who is serving as the first Black “master” of a residence hall at a prestigious university. From the moment she moves in, she senses something is amiss, from the Aunt Jemima-like figurine shoved in the back of a cabinet to the pallid portraits of former masters hanging in the halls. A secondary narrative thread follows Jasmine Moore (Zoe Renee), a freshman and one of the few African-American students on campus. She too is uncomfortable with the legacy portraits—at one point the face of one briefly appears demonic and disfigured to her—as well as with the story of another student who committed suicide in her dorm room in the 1960s. Writer-director Mariama Diallo, making her feature debut, is absolutely onto something here, as so much of storied American history ignores the ghosts of racism. When she lets this come out in the imagery—those portraits, as well as a recurring use of shadowy silhouettes that lend a spookiness to otherwise benign settings—Master unsettles in pointedly insidious ways. With a more streamlined narrative, it would have been stunning. As is, the movie certainly marks Diallo as promising.
(3/16/2022)
