On paper, Master should be one of the most important and unsettling films of the year. In execution, it fails to provoke or scare.
Regina Hall, who can deftly move between silly comedies like Girls Trip and serious dramas like The Hate U Give, is weirdly stiff here as Gail, a professor and "master" of the freshman dorm at a small New England college. One of her young students is Jasmine. Zoe Moore does an admirable job of playing her alienation. But there's little development as to why these two women chose to attend this mostly white liberal arts college.
Before we get to the supernatural elements, they endure all kinds of dirty looks, microaggressions and outright hatred from students, staff and faculty. But to make sure the audience gets the point, the film gets smothered by obvious symbolism, like having maggots infest Gail's house. Why, it's almost as if this institution were rotting from the inside!
The real-life horrors suffered by Jasmine – including death threats, harassment and discrimination – are frightening and realistic enough on their own. Attempts to tenuously connect them to some sort of eternal, supernatural evil make them less scary. The film's odd pace also undercuts the tension. Events occur without a real build. When things take a deadly turn, it's not nearly as impactful as it should be.
But there's still another half hour to go! And so the film switches gears to a weird, out-of-nowhere subplot about falsely presenting as Black, which also involves the weird off-the-grid cult in town (sort of). The film also ends in extremely anticlimactic fashion. Along the way, Diallo got a couple good digs at hypocritical white liberals and the exclusive circles they create in academia. But as satire, horror and even compelling drama, Master fails to make the grade.
*This review originally appeared as part of our 2022 SXSW coverage.
