Review | 'Master' is a horror movie in the shadow of 'Get Out': a metaphor for race in America – The Washington Post

May 19, 2022 by The Beat Maker - 0 Comments

In “Master,” Regina Hall plays Gail Bishop, the newly appointed dean of students — or master — at a prestigious Massachusetts college called Ancaster. While Gail is moving into her new home, where the walls are covered with ivy, another initiation is occurring across campus, with the arrival of Jasmine Moore (Zoe Renee), a newly arrived freshman who makes her way to the quad with a familiar mixture of confidence and wariness.
“We’ve got a live one,” an upperclassman chirps when she spies Jasmine, a line delivered with such cheerful malice that the viewer is immediately put on edge. There are moments in “Master,” which marks the promising if uneven feature debut of writer-director Mariama Diallo, when Gail and Jasmine’s parallel but common travails feel like they’re heading into territory already plumbed by such satires as “Dear White People” and the Netflix series “The Chair.” Soon enough, it becomes clear that Diallo’s main reference is “Get Out” and other works of elevated horror that have sought to dramatize the displacement and psychic violence so often experienced by Black people navigating historically White spaces.
Those moments of discomfort range from humiliating microaggressions and lazy assumptions (Jasmine’s White roommate and her friends blithely throw her a rag to clean up a mess they made) to outright malevolence. One of “Master’s” most effective scenes features Jasmine at a frat party, dancing expressively to a joyful pop song, only to realize moments later that her White peers are chanting the N-word with gleeful abandon.
Meanwhile, Gail has entered her own crucible: Well-meaning colleagues compare her to former president Barack Obama, and when another woman of color is put up for tenure, she’s confronted with a stark reminder of who belongs at Ancaster and who doesn’t.
Of course, as one character says midway through “Master,” this isn’t about Ancaster. It’s about America. Although Diallo makes some trenchant observations about diversity-equity-inclusion initiatives and cultural appropriation (culminating in a clever third-act reveal), she jams too many plot beats, characters and polemical points into the narrative for all of them to pay off satisfactorily. Although “Master” involves a fair amount of magical realism and dream sequences, too it often lacks credibility. Would it really take Jasmine as long as it does to meet one of the only other Black students on campus?
“Master” is a deeply pessimistic movie, in which both Renee and Hall deliver quietly powerful portrayals of women who come to crucial realizations much too late — about isolation, identity and their own roles within structures and stories that were never created to support them. “Master” might be a horror film, but its scariest elements are off screen, in the form of the persistent social realities that inspired it.
R. At area theaters. Contains strong language and some drug use. 91 minutes.

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