Horror

dir: Mariama Diallo

2022

Master is the kind of horror flick that’s not really a horror flick. It feels like someone had what they felt was a trenchant or powerful story to tell, and then someone with money / power said to them “what if you made it into a horror flick / maybe turn it into a trilogy?”

That’s not entirely fair. The horror is there in the story, because something horrible happens to someone, but if this was an episode of Scooby Doo, the captured and tied-up villain at the end, when their mask is pulled off, would be “white supremacy”.

And they would have gotten away with it… wait, they did get away with it, every time.

But there is no mask pulling off ceremony at the end. There’s just certain people realising there’s nothing they can do in the face of overwhelming, insurmountable evil.

The title comes from the fact that one of the main characters is appointed the “master” of a halls of residence at an old university called Ancaster. The university is as old as America, we are told, and everything implies that this place is built on the bones of slavery, despite being in a state that isn’t renowned for its racism, in some mythical place called New England. I was sure that it had to be somewhere like Pennsylvania, but other reviews refer to rural Massachusetts or even that it’s meant to be an equivalent to Yale in Connecticut, where the director herself studied.

Almost all of the faculty and the student body are white. Almost suspiciously, predominately white. So the “master” being appointed, being African-American (Regina Hall), is either ironic or part of the overall project of whitewashing / blackwashing(?) the university’s legacy and paying lip service to current notions of diversity and inclusiveness.

Jasmine (Zoe Renee), from her very first orientation day, is pretty much doomed. Within seconds of appearing on campus she’s pretty much told she’s staying in a cursed room and that she’s going to die because some witch was hung centuries ago and then the first African-American woman to go Ancaster hung herself in the 60s.

dir: Nikyatu Jusu

2022

Nanny comes at a time where it seems to be “of the moment”, or to put it most horribly, it’s very zeitgeist-y. There have been a string of recent novels about immigrant women working as nannies or au pairs and wanting to murder their precious charges (most notably Leïla Slimani’s Lullaby), but this is the most recent I can think of that shoots for (eventually) straight horror, supernatural or otherwise.

It doesn’t really work, at all, but I still enjoyed watching it. Primarily, it’s a visually strong film, and it stars the luminous Anna Diop, who’s mostly worked in television and is best known, at least by me, for playing Starfire in the Titans series. She’s great, here and elsewhere, but…

I think this film knows what it’s trying to say – the immigrant experience, documented or otherwise, compels many women to leave their families or their kids behind, travel to other countries where they sometimes have to look after the kids of wealthy shitheads. This causes a certain amount of tension. You end up lavishing all the love and care that you have in you, onto someone else’s kid, in order to get the money to send back to the people looking after your kid.

But for some strange reason despite being wealthy these rich fuckers never pay on time. And they make insane demands all the time. And the husband tries to fuck you. And the drunken wife resents you because the kid likes you more, and they feel guilty because they’re away from home working or travelling…

This is rich ground psychologically to plant a lot of dramatic seeds from which could spring the stuff of social commentary and / or nightmares. The flick wants to have its cake and eat it too, and I don’t think it earns that paradox at all. At all. Especially because it goes down a certain track that seems unforgivable when the big “reveal” happens at the end.

Aisha (Anna Diop) is in the States in an undocumented manner, meaning that she can’t work officially, and needs to get by with cash in hand jobs. A (white) family with their one precious Rose (Rose Decker) have all sorts of expectations of Aisha. It’s almost like there’s the feeling of entitlement to her time and presence, because she should be so grateful.

There’s oh so many micro-aggressions, but that’s okay, that’s what we’d expect. All of the nannies seem to be from “other” backgrounds, and they are all at the mercy of employees who see them as the exploitable resource that they are.

Aisha sends money back to Senegal, where her son Lamine is. She facetimes him as often as she can, but that can only go so far. I can’t really see that she has any plan beyond earning as much as she can to send back to Senegal in order to allow for her friend to send her son to her in the States. I’m not sure why this is the plan, but this is the plan.

Her employers are as awful as you imagine they would be. The mum (Michelle Monaghan) of course is a nervy tyrant, who somehow appreciates what Aisha can bring to the table for her daughter (being bilingual, she can teach English and French to Rose), but simultaneously resent the fact that this woman gets to spend way more time with her daughter than she does.

And she’s a workaholic / alcoholic whose photojournalist husband (Morgan Spector) fucks everyone he comes into contact with, except presumably his wife. At least he pays Aisha on time, eh? As well as going in for a kiss when the opportunity presents itself.

Bleh. Boo. I boo what you're doing.

(Pahanhautoja)

dir: Hanna Bergholm

2022

What a Freudian field day for the whole freaking family.

I can’t remember the last time I watched a Finnish film, but I can tell you two things: it was probably by Aki Kaurismaki, the only other Finnish director I can think of, and it was nothing like this. Certainly not as colourful.

This is flat out a horror flick, there’s no getting around it, and it’s a fairly brutal one. Don’t let gentle images of girls and eggs lull you into a false sense of security. It is pretty funny in parts, but I wouldn’t call this a dark comedy or anything like that. It’s way too bright, for one thing.

There is a Mother (Sophia Keikillä), who is an Instagram-influencer monster, a Father (Jani Volanen), a daughter Tinja (Siiri Solalinna) and a son Matias (Oiva Ollila). The son is a boring carbon copy of the father, and the mother does everything in her power to make the daughter into her clone. Everything they do, every way their house looks, has to be Instagram-worthy.

When Tinja competes in gymnastics, there’s none of that “just go out there and have fun” bullshit, or “good job” this or “you tried your best” that. There’s only “win or I will disfigure you” type tough love without the love part.

This can have an effect on a young woman’s development. When a bird flies into the house during one of these White Woman Instagram moments, and punctures Mother’s fantasy, Tinja tries to gently catch the bird, but Mother is all “I’m here for the neck snappings, nothing else”.

This unleashes forces the Mother, the Father, the whole neighbourhood simply cannot understand, but at least it will help Tinja achieve some measure of self-realisation.

Struggling as she is to live up to her Mother’s strict requirements, Tinja gets the opportunity to look after a new life in the form of an egg, from the mortally wounded bird. She protects the egg. She cradles the egg. She puts into it all her rage, shame, anger, jealousy, even as she’s doing her best to nurture it and see it grow.

What hatches is a sight, a sight to behold. I don’t think there’s any CGI involved, it looks like practical, physical effects work. It’s impressive, and kinda sickening, too.

Tinja calls this inhuman bird / child hybrid Alli, after a lullaby, and the ways of feeding it are pretty gross. Alli does need regurgitated food, like all baby birds. But she also likes to feed on blood and emotions. She especially seems to like killing neighbourhood pets and anyone else that pisses Tinja off.

dir: Ben Steiner

2022

Matriarch is sort of predicated on the idea that, damn, mothers can be quite harsh.

I mean, that’s relatable, surely? Some people, even ones that have or had a decent, loving relationship with their mums as adults can still have an array of unresolved or unresolvable conflicts.

Well, a further qualification of this premise is: What if, as an adult, you were a drug addicted fuck up, and the mother you hated was the leader of some weird village sex cult?

This murky, muddled, made for tv-looking horror flick probably has a decent cast, it’s hard to tell. Most of the flick is spent watching the main character ping around like a ball in a pinball machine.

Laura (Jemima Rooper) works for an ad company, and like all people who work in the ad industry, she is doing cocaine constantly and sculling vodka from a water bottle. Though this behaviour isn’t celebrated by the people around her, once we figure out that she hates her mother, we think “oh, she’s like this because of her mum.”

At a moment when it looks like Laura has checked out completely, she wakes up again, but only after seeming like some black ichor / liquid has seeped into her body.

Gross. This prompts her to go back to whatever village she was from to talk with the mother she has avoided for 20 years, played by Kate Dickie.

It’s never explained why the mum, clearly a Scot, and the daughter don’t have the same accent, but I guess it’s immaterial. The mum is, right from the start, making all these clucky noises of concern, but constantly trying to roofie Laura. The movie makes no attempt to hide the fact that Celia, the mum, is constantly trying to knock Laura out and to drag her to a greenhouse.

Laura’s journey is meant to be like “oh, wow, I have a heap of unresolved issues, and maybe if I return home and talk to my mum, and to some other locals, including my ex-girlfriend from 20 years ago, I can resolve some stuff and move on with my life?”

The mum’s journey is “nah, I cannae stand ye and ye haff te fucken die.”