Master

In Mariama Diallo’s promising first feature, the cruelty of offhand racism collides with more spectral horrors to ultimately unsatisfactory results.

Get out! Zoe Renee starts seeing things.

Gail Bishop (Regina Hall) is the first black master at Ancaster, an elite university in New England. It is her first term and the college is making giant strides to appear more inclusive. Almost as old as the US itself, the college has produced two presidents and, in its time, even rejected Franklin D. Roosevelt. It is also the first term of Jasmine Moore (Zoe Renee), a diligent, bright black student who was valedictorian and class president at her old school and is always the first with her hand up in class. But there seem to be other forces at play here, as both Jasmine and Gail Bishop notice odd sounds and things not as they should not be. “Just because you’re not seeing something doesn’t mean it isn’t there,” argues Jasmine’s English professor (Amber Gray) on her essay “a critical race analysis on The Scarlett Letter”. Her essay is given an ‘F’. But even more disturbing are the livid scratches that appear on Jasmine’s arm at night and the story that a black undergraduate in her room committed suicide decades earlier. Apparently, she was driven to suicide after seeing disturbing visions of a woman who was hanged after being accused of witchcraft.

Master feels brighter than it actually is. Marking the directorial debut of Mariama Diallo, working from her own screenplay, its cinematographer, editors and costume designer are also female. Diallo, herself a graduate of Yale, admits that her college days were enjoyable, but that she failed to notice the microaggressions around her. And so many of the ghosts in her first screenplay take on an allegorical aspect, much like the insidious racism in Get Out. Whereas Bishop is haunted by a more patronising discrimination, Jasmine is confronted by direct racist threats, such as a noose tied to her door and the word LEAVE carved into its wood. But to both Jasmine and Bishop the hauntings appear very real indeed. This commentary on the emotional cost of casual bigotry promises more than it delivers. Regrettably, Diallo’s inexperience behind the camera shows up in front of it.

There are a lot of smart ideas buzzing around. Ultimately, though, Master is neither one thing nor the other. It is trying to be a collegiate Get Out, with lashings of an old haunted house opus, but the film wears its tropes on its sleeve. And so there are the unexplained bangs, hooded figures and unexplained nightmares, while Regina Hall and Zoe Renee struggle to inject a note of credibility. Alas, the clichés get the better of them and just as the film, in its last chapter, seems to be going somewhere interesting, it ends on an inconclusive note. The main problem is that it is neither scary nor convincing, although its reflections on the racial divide do hit home. When Bishop says, “It’s not ghosts. It’s not supernatural. It’s America. You can’t get away from it, Jasmine,” one senses the film surging in a new direction. And just as Bishop leaves the confines of the hostile campus for the first time – and walks into a diner in the local town – reality flickers into life. But by then it is too late and Master once again returns to the hackneyed.

JAMES CAMERON-WILSON

Cast: Regina Hall, Zoe Renee, Talia Ryder, Talia Balsam, Amber Gray, Ella Hunt, Noa Fisher, Kara Young, Bruce Altman, Jennifer Dundas, Joel de la Fuente, Molly Bernard, Nike Kadri, Will Hochman, Megan Byrne, Julia Nightingale. 

Dir Mariama Diallo, Pro Joshua Astrachan, Brad Becker-Parton and Andrea Roa, Ex Pro Regina Hall, Screenplay Mariama Diallo, Ph Charlotte Hornsby, Pro Des Meredith Lippincott and Tommy Love, Ed Jennifer Lee and Maya Maffioli, Music Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Costumes Mirren Gordon-Crozier, Sound Robert Hein. 

Animal Kingdom/Big Indie Pictures-Republic Film Distribution.
98 mins. USA. 2020. UK and US Rel: 18 March 2022. Available on Amazon Prime. Cert. 15.