The Angry Black Girl and her Monster

It doesn’t take long into Bomani J. Story’s The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster before the Mary Shelley influence begins to show. However there’s deeper work at here rather than a straight lift.

Vicaria (Laya DeLeon Hayes) is an exceptional student that having been placed in a predominately white school, ostensibly to further her education, finds that her questions and penetrative thinking are too much for her teacher. This results in her being thrown out by security. Vicaria’s theory is that death is a disease that can be cured. The brutal death of her brother Chris (Edem Atsu-Swanzy) provides her with an opportunity to prove her theory. Taking advantage of an abandoned space close to her home she works on her theories, with Chris and assorted body parts.

At the same time, she’s under scrutiny from the local drug lord, Kango (Denzel Whitaker) whom she suspects is responsible for her brother’s death. Her mother before him a casualty of the drug violence that poisons her neighbourhood. The same gang is now supplying her father with drugs.

It’s through these tragedies that Vicaria commits to science. And that commitment to comes to fruition one night. Though Chris is not what she expected being now no more than her creation and a disfigured pathetic figure.

There’s a fair amount to examine here from its production as a low budget horror with very good practical effects, to solid social commentary and theory, all held together by consistent performances from the whole cast.

It can appear didactic at times with the references to Columbus and Malcolm X from Chris’s ex Aisha (Reilly Brooke Stith) not sitting that comfortably within the overall script. Though it is balanced by Vicaria telling Aisha’s daughter Jada (Amani Summer) about the positive success of black female scientists.

It is far more incisive when looking at the complex nature of black neighbourhoods that through neglect and prejudice are driving the young towards the drug gangs, themselves the result of that same neglect.

However none of this can easily be disentangled from the horror that Vicaria unleashes on the community, as they are in some respect already in a horrific situation resulting from actions that have nothing to do with the supernatural, rather very deliberate human policy.

Vicaria is looking through this with some logic and the naivety of hope that something good can result and take her and others away from a very likely grim future.

The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster is available now on Shudder.
3 stars