Representation is important, in front of and behind the camera. While I’m not one to say that films should never be made about certain communities by those who are not from those communities (a White, British guy can make a great movie centered on an African American neighborhood – see Candyman (1992)), I do think it is important that people be given the opportunity to tell their own stories. This isn’t only a matter of parity, of the fairness of self-representation; it’s good for the art. When members of under-represented groups tell their own tales, there may be different points of focus, new perspectives, the camera may be pointed in places someone from without may not have thought to point it, and we all benefit from a wider range of life experience being committed to film.
With that in mind, February is “Black History Month” (at least in America, where I’m from) and until quite recently, it was also “Women in Horror Month” (though as of 2022, the organizers have opted for a more year-long approach). Therefore, I thought it might be a good project to try some horror films, all new for me, made by Black female directors. I will say though, as sometimes occurs when seeking to fill a representational gap, an initial search has not turned up so many to choose from (echoes of the other week when I had trouble finding a “Lesbian Vampire film” made by an LGBT+, female identifying director, or a vampire for that matter). But I have found some, so let’s check a couple out.
As I haven’t seen these before and don’t know how much there will be to discuss, it’s possible that these will be shorter reviews and therefore, I’ll endeavor to keep them spoiler free.
Eve’s Bayou (1997)
Right off the bat, before any reader objects – ok, I do have some trouble counting this as a horror film. It’s got rich, steamy Louisiana atmosphere. It’s got some death. Psychic elements. Maybe ghosts. Hoodoo death curses. But the mood is overwhelmingly that of a period drama rather than horror – it feels like an adaptation of some worthy historical novel. Still, it was listed as “horror” on IMDB and I remember it being discussed in the excellent Horror Noir (2019) documentary, detailing Black representation in Horror films, so here it is; and I do think it has value worth discussing, even if it’s a stretch to include it in the genre.
While her feature directorial debut may only tangentially relate to horror, as an actor, Kasi Lemmons had already held key roles in the genre (fulfilling the trope of Black best friend to the White female lead in Silence of the Lambs and Candyman). Just a few years later, she wrote and directed this deeply personal film which Roger Ebert (not always a friend to Horror) named the best of the year (it was also the most profitable independent film of 1997).
A 60s period piece set in the small town of Eve’s Bayou, outside of New Orleans, the film centers on a ten year old girl named Eve, whom we know from the opening narration by the end of the summer will kill her father, that threat of violence hanging over the rest of the proceedings. Eve’s father is a successful doctor and their family is local royalty of sorts, descended from a Famous French general and the freed slave woman to whom he’d dedicated the town. Her father, Louis Batiste (Samuel L. Jackson), is also a notorious philanderer and this is the source of no small amount of family drama. Jackson brings so much easy charm to the role, and you can see how women would be drawn to him, as well as how easily he could manipulate his wife and family. It’s refreshing to see him play a character with so little bluster, so much warmth, and such deep dysfunction under the surface. It’s no wonder that he came on the project as a producer – it’s a great part.
Eve’s aunt (Louis’s sister) has psychic premonitions, which it seems Eve shares, and works as a kind of spiritual therapist, assisting townspeople with their own traumas, while suffering greatly herself, cursed as she is to always outlive her husbands (so far, she’s been through three). And rounding out the spiritual cast, there is the local Hoodoo woman who tells fortunes that aren’t always so nice and has no qualms about dealing with darker magics if the price is right. Otherwise, the film focuses on the relationships between Eve, her mother, her older sister, and her younger brother, as they navigate the personal betrayals, the hazy visions of something tragic looming in their future, and the crazy-making emotions and impulses of childhood and adolescence. Much of the film is borne by the young performers and while they may not hit every beat, they do an admirable job of carrying a great deal of emotional weight.
I can’t say that I was totally captivated at every turn by the story (though there were surely strong moments and elements), but I did appreciate the representational project. Inspired by family trips to Louisiana in her childhood, Lemmons gives so much attention to small details of this community, its people, its spirituality and superstitions, and its aspirations – and it is noteworthy that this is a different kind of small, rural, southern Black populace than is usually portrayed on film. This is a fairly well-to-do middle class society, in which the Batistes stand out for their money and position. This isn’t a story about poverty, the ghosts of slavery, or the struggle for Civil Rights – this is a thriving population full of its own characters and stories and dramas, with no need to look further afield for greater significance. Notably, there doesn’t seem to be a single White person in the cast (plenty of films might feature an all-White cast without drawing notice). The story is self-contained – about Eve and her family and their troubles – we look through their eyes and not those of some outside perspective intended to purportedly help a mainstream White audience connect.
By the end of the film, her father is indeed dead – but did she actually kill him? That is in doubt. There have been dark revelations, but those revelations have also been cast into doubt. All is subjective and nothing is very certain. To paraphrase the closing narration, the past and the future can both be seen, but both change depending on the light. Lemmons succeeded in bringing a similarly personal emotionality to it all, focusing her lens on a time and a place, on nuances of character and society that another filmmaker might not have been so drawn to. I still have trouble calling it “Horror” per se, but it is a work of value and I’m glad to have given it a chance.
Master (2022)
Mariama Diallo’s directorial feature debut, which she also wrote, does clearly situate itself more firmly in the genre, though by the end it’s thrown into question whether anything has actually been supernatural or if this has all really been more of a psycho-social, allegorical drama. Regardless, it does feel like a horror movie, particularly through its first two acts, and that’s enough for me. Past that, it is a very different piece than the preceding film. Whereas Eve’s Bayou stood out for its focus on the nuances of life within its geographically and culturally specific Louisiana Black community, Master directly sets its crosshairs on the current experience of being Black in America writ large, particularly when navigating contexts historically dominated by rich White people, in this case, Academia.
I will say, before going into full detail, that the film is really rich in ideas, lived experiences, and an entirely unsettling, oppressive sense of dread and discomfort. That said, sometimes there is just so much going on in terms of a possible ghost story, the echoes of a witch hanging, the specter of slavery and/or Black servitude, and the contemporary ‘micro-aggressions’ and mendacity both encountered and perpetrated by our protagonists that I have difficulty pulling the threads together. Are these the failings of an over-ambitiously messy first feature, or is the intention to make an evocative, disturbing mélange of a film rather than telling a totally straightforward story? If the former, it is still such an overall success that it’s easy to forgive the ways it doesn’t quite gel by the end. If the latter, it is quite effective in its goal, though it does suffer somewhat for having created initial expectations of, let’s say, typical genre-based narrative coherence which it seems to lose interest in during the final stretch.
We follow two Black women at a prestigious New England University which is notably homogeneous. Jasmine, a freshman housed in a dorm room which may be haunted, in which the school’s first Black student had hanged herself years ago, is one of perhaps 8 or 9 Black students on campus. Gail is one of the only Black members of the faculty, and has just been made the “Master” of the students’ house that Jasmine lives in. Being a Master is prestigious and Gail is the first Black professor to hold such a position. Almost immediately, both of them begin to experience spooky stuff. Portraits of the school’s founder suddenly appear skeletal, maggots seem to spontaneously generate in surprising places, dreams are haunted by ghostly premonitions, spindly clawed hands reach out from beneath beds, and mysterious cloaked figures loom in the night.
All of these typical Horror trappings are seamlessly interwoven with similarly discomforting socio-racial dynamics. Jasmine sees an older Black cafeteria worker warmly coddling all of the White students only to get the cold shoulder when she approaches. Gail finds countless racist artifacts in her new “Master” chambers, such as a “Mammy” cookie jar or remnants of Black servants’ quarters. Jasmine tries to fit in with her roommate’s rich friends, but they all (barely) subtly treat her more like the help than like a peer. Gail suspects that her rise in status is thanks more to optics than respect, and that her colleagues mainly want her in the position to clean up the school’s historical image. And most dramatically, Jasmine suffers direct harassment, with racist images and nooses hung on her dorm room door.
It is the primary strength of the film that all of these elements seem to carry equal weight as the intimations of supernatural threat. I think this is mutually beneficial – the horror movie tropes are given greater emotional weight by being linked with the real world issues and the examination of socio-racial discomfort benefits from being accurately framed as “horror.” All of it is dreadful. All of it is scary. All of it communicates the message that “you are not welcome here – you are not wanted – leave while you can,” and at the same time, both women are justified in wanting to stick it out, to not give up, to not let it all get to them. They want to be stronger than that and not be defeated by this ugliness. Ultimately though, the ugly, the danger, the ghosts of the past are really quite a force to be reckoned with.
The clawed figure that haunts Jasmine’s dreams and pushes her towards the window from which past students have jumped is scary, but is it scarier than when she finds herself the only Black person at a party, surrounded by White students aggressively shouting along to a rap song, gleefully screaming the N-word at her and making gorilla sounds? This is filmed as a horror scene, and rightly so. Gail is largely aware of what Jasmine is going through, having been there before herself, but she can’t look through her eyes, can’t always be there to push back against the social weight. And she is pulled in other directions, navigating her own issues in the school, particularly the racial overtones surrounding the possible advancement of the school’s only other Black, female professor. There’s only so much she can do.
By the end, the supernatural element fades to the background or is even consciously abandoned – either it was always metaphoric, or it just can’t compete with the human social forces that make life for the two of them at this school, which they’ve both worked so hard to get to, so very unbearable. Shortly before this, perhaps putting a cap on the possible ghost story, Gail tells Jasmine, “It’s not ghosts. It’s not supernatural. It’s America, and it’s everywhere.” It’s a bleak turn – it would be so much easier if there was just a scary ghost to appease, or even if that weren’t possible, to know that it could only haunt so many, only hurt so many. But nope – Gail knows that what Jasmine’s experiencing can’t be run away from; it is just the world that they inhabit.
In the end, though, both characters do leave the university in their ways, but as Gail walks off campus for the last time (after being stopped by campus security and asked to show her faculty ID), we see the night alive with service workers – garbage men, landscapers – all of them Black, just doing their jobs – maintaining a beautiful environment for (primarily) privileged White kids. She may leave, but nothing has changed. Perhaps nothing will change. And really, where is there to go? As I said, it’s a dark ending.
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From one angle, these are two totally disparate films – one only tangentially connected to the supernatural and one steeped in horror conventions – one entirely set within a Black community and one focused on the tension of being Black in a “White space” – one a cohesive family drama and one a thematically broad hodgepodge of racism, literal hauntings, and social anxiety. However, the similarities are just as striking. Both were first feature films written and directed by a Black woman, and both clearly shed light on specific experiences of being a Black woman in America in a concrete time and place – these are not generalizations, but feel distinct and individualized. What a pleasure and what a value.
Sadly however, these will be the only films considered for now. This is a busy week for me outside of the blog, so this is as far as I’m going today. But February isn’t over yet and I plan to continue in this vein next time.