The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster owes to James Whale and Mary Shelley equally. While writer and director Bomani J. Story signals lofty goals with allusions to the Frankenstein novel, there are also references to the pre-code horror classic, like bolts of lightning and a character shouting, “It’s alive” with a mix of joy and mania.
That is not say, however, that Story’s film goes in two directions. The material is fertile and malleable enough that the new setting, an anonymous housing project, is a thoughtful place for the film to explore themes of defiance and resurrection. Most mad scientists want to defy nature (or God, if you prefer) in some way, while the hero of this version is not as ambitious. She wants to stop the epidemic of death in her neighborhood.
Before the title card, we hear Vicaria (Laya DeLeon Hayes) announce, “Death is a disease.” Put another way, she believes that death can be “cured,” an attractive idea given her tragic past. Vicaria may still be in high school, but she already knows tragedy because her mother and brother died way too young. The script gives Vicaria enough scientific know-how to suggest she is a genius, something that a secret lab full of DIY equipment further confirms. Spite motivates Vicaria almost as much as grief: after being humiliated by a teacher in the “nice” high school where she is the only black student, Vicaria decides to resurrect her brother Chris (Edem Atsu-Swanzy), which of course is no tearful reunion. Violent and angry, Chris is a murderous creature hellbent on revenge, one who terrorizes the community because he gives little thought about who is in his wake.
The housing project setting imbues the story with a strain of relevance. Story does not dwell on the poverty, and instead suggests this is a neighborhood where ordinary people depend on each other because they have no other alternative. Everyone is deep in each other’s business, including Kango (Denzel Whitaker), a drug dealer who is more of the neighborhood’s fabric than a pariah or nuisance. This sense of community is a canny way to develop suspense, as the lack of privacy make it harder for Vicaria to keep the resurrected Chris a secret. Sometimes the film’s attempt to update Shelley’s tale gets a little heavy-handed – the dialogue can sometimes have a didactic streak – although these diversions do not dampen the conceit’s overall power. Sometimes the moralizing even be justified, like when Vicaria’s father (Chad L. Coleman) reminds a white woman his surname is not a point of pride.
No matter how clever or urgent the concept, the material must also deliver as a horror story. In that vein, what elevates The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster are the practical special effects and the performances. Vicaria and the others do not behave like they are in a horror film, so when the monster goes on his inevitable killing spree, there is a desperation that elevates the stakes beyond a typical creature feature (Hayes, a young actor who mostly appears on family television, shows here that she has serious dramatic chops). Story is not also shy about blood, either, including just enough gross-out effects and mangled bodies to satisfy hardened genre fans. In fact, the realism of the characters compounds the gore, since there is no winking irony to suggest it is all a joke.
When Vicaria’s blind grief pushes her to desire cheat death, and later as she sadly realizes there is no place for the monstrous Chris, Story suggests these are two sides of the same conclusion. A violent epidemic puts the survivors in an impossibly unfair position, even when they learn to live with it, which means there is a sense of inevitability to the film’s final passages. After all, the whole point of an experiment gone awry is to learn from mistakes, and Vicaria’s struggling community will no doubt provide her with future opportunities.
Photo courtesy of RJLE film
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