Master

With a stellar cast and inspired direction, Master is a thrilling and potent horror story about academia that has made its impact.

Diallo has a lot of things to say here. Yet sometimes words aren’t enough: a straight-up drama won’t bring audiences to the place where Diallo wants to take them. Rest assured she makes her points crystal clear within the genre trappings: the only question left is where next for this talented new director.

An arresting feature debut from director Mariama Diallo, Master gingerly walks the tightrope between outright supernatural horror and a criticism of the enduring power of monied white privilege.

Diallo’s dramatic horror film is rich with atmosphere and subtext and deserves recognition, despite its narrative shortcomings.

Diallo utilises the visual language of horror – red lighting, empty shower stalls, a gnarled hand that emerges from under the bed – to express the terror of racism and the rot of its legacy.

The thing that may be most chilling about “Master” is how its three protagonists want and need to support one another but ultimately cannot due to internal as well as external forces.

Mariama Diallo’s film never seems to fully buy into its horror trappings and ends up treating its characters as avatars for multiple grievances.

Amidst the conflicts of decision that its director deploys, Master turns out to be a story that is diluted in development and not so much in conceptualization. The story and representation are there, but not a truly focused approach. The story this director tells is about the racism embedded in the cultural existence of communities that are majority white, and institutionally in universities of higher education. So far so good, especially in tone. But what could have been much more relevant for its thematic content and excellently atmospheric for its cinematic style, is dissipated by a constant foolishness to create sequences that feel more disorienting than frightening. Again, the message is there and that helps, and the questions it provokes are more than pertinent, but if you're aiming to make a horror/suspense film with it's notable social commentary, you have to go beyond what Jordan Peele does. Master is a more serious film than Peele's, but it's clear that there are a lot of lessons here that were learned from Get Out and Us.

(Mauro Lanari) In her feature film debut, Diallo faces an avalanche of arguments she can't focus, jamming "too many plot beats, characters and polemical points into the narrative for all of them to pay off satisfactorily" (Ann Hornaday of "The Washington Post").

Yeap. I have a very massive problem with modern-day "aesthetic" horrors. Nowadays, horrors are partnering with another genre, drama. But the problem is, the drama side is oppressing the horror part. Adding an excellent dramatic storyline is, of course, necessary, but writers are forgetting to scare us. As fits the name, it is Horror! Horrors should horrify. But now they are just very well-stylized dramatic borings. Nothing more. I had big hopes for Master, but it is just another dramatic dull. Sorry, but I don't watch Horrors for messages. I need something that would scare me. Messages would be a plus for me.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]