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This was my third favorite of the movies I saw at virtual Sundance. It's very strong up until the end, which leaves a lot of threads hanging.
Gail (Regina Hall) is appointed as the first Black master of an elite New England university. On the surface, she's welcomed; not very far at all beneath the surface, she's a curiosity appointed to a historically deeply racist college by a lot of white people patting themselves on the back so hard, they're about to seek care for back bruises and shoulder sprains.
While she's still trying to navigate this situation, a Black student accuses her of racism, and Black students become the target of racist attacks which may or may not be supernatural. Meanwhile, there are extremely fraught tenure hearings. Gail investigates, and learns very unsettling things about the college's racist past, which may be very literally still haunting it. A woman was hanged in the area hundreds of years ago for being a witch. Was she a witch, or an innocent victim of prejudice? Either way, could she still be haunting the campus?
The horror aspects are fantastic as horror and as sociopolitical commentary, but the last act fell apart for me - it worked on a metaphoric level but not on a plot level.
Toward the end, Gail's friend Liv, who has always said she's biracial, gets her racial identity questioned. She's either a white Rachel Dolezal type, or biracial but raised in an otherwise white cult. The truth is unknowable, to Gail and possibly even to Liv herself. If she really is biracial, then everything that rings false about her makes sense - it's her actual truth, but one she was only able to learn the same way an actual white woman would have had to learn it, from the outside in. This is a fascinating, meaty storyline that probably should have been introduced earlier.
The end doesn't resolve or answer very much at all. I wanted some sort of explanation of what the hell was actually going on with the witch, and whether there even was a witch. Maybe the witch is actually the spirit of white supremacy, and Margaret who was hanged was just an innocent woman - maybe even a Black woman - who was scapegoated in death as well as life. Maybe there is no witch, and the immortal white faculty gain powers by sacrificing a Black student every year. Or some such. I just wanted some explanation.
And if some of the faculty were immortal, how did that tie in on a non-metaphorical, WTF is going on level?
Master on Amazon Prime Video.
Gail (Regina Hall) is appointed as the first Black master of an elite New England university. On the surface, she's welcomed; not very far at all beneath the surface, she's a curiosity appointed to a historically deeply racist college by a lot of white people patting themselves on the back so hard, they're about to seek care for back bruises and shoulder sprains.
While she's still trying to navigate this situation, a Black student accuses her of racism, and Black students become the target of racist attacks which may or may not be supernatural. Meanwhile, there are extremely fraught tenure hearings. Gail investigates, and learns very unsettling things about the college's racist past, which may be very literally still haunting it. A woman was hanged in the area hundreds of years ago for being a witch. Was she a witch, or an innocent victim of prejudice? Either way, could she still be haunting the campus?
The horror aspects are fantastic as horror and as sociopolitical commentary, but the last act fell apart for me - it worked on a metaphoric level but not on a plot level.
Toward the end, Gail's friend Liv, who has always said she's biracial, gets her racial identity questioned. She's either a white Rachel Dolezal type, or biracial but raised in an otherwise white cult. The truth is unknowable, to Gail and possibly even to Liv herself. If she really is biracial, then everything that rings false about her makes sense - it's her actual truth, but one she was only able to learn the same way an actual white woman would have had to learn it, from the outside in. This is a fascinating, meaty storyline that probably should have been introduced earlier.
The end doesn't resolve or answer very much at all. I wanted some sort of explanation of what the hell was actually going on with the witch, and whether there even was a witch. Maybe the witch is actually the spirit of white supremacy, and Margaret who was hanged was just an innocent woman - maybe even a Black woman - who was scapegoated in death as well as life. Maybe there is no witch, and the immortal white faculty gain powers by sacrificing a Black student every year. Or some such. I just wanted some explanation.
And if some of the faculty were immortal, how did that tie in on a non-metaphorical, WTF is going on level?
Master on Amazon Prime Video.