REVIEW: The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster [2023]

Rating: NR | Runtime: 91 minutes
Release Date: June 9th, 2023 (USA)
Studio: RLJE Films / AllBlk / Shudder
Director(s): Bomani J. Story
Writer(s): Bomani J. Story

Death is a disease.

It’s a chicken/egg conundrum. Do people call you a monster because you are one? Or are you a monster because that’s all they ever let you be? Writer/director Bomani J. Story delves into the difference with Vicaria (Laya DeLeon Hayes) and Chris (Edem Atsu-Swanzy), the central siblings of his Frankenstein update The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster.

Their mother died by a stray bullet. Chris died by a purposeful one while working for neighborhood drug kingpin Kango (Denzel Whitaker). Vicaria decides to never suffer that pain again by building a laboratory in an abandoned unit of their housing complex that’s driven with the philosophy that death is a disease and, as such, must be curable. It’s not therefore a trick when we meet her dragging a corpse out of frame. Her science can only advance with experimentation and experimentation demands resources.

What Vicaria cannot anticipate upon bringing her long-dead brother back to life, however, is that his biology will not resemble the person he used to be. A decomposed brain leaves him grunting while the fear of those around him ignite an impulse to violence. So, is he still Chris? Maybe not. Can he eventually become more like the Chris from before? Maybe—if the world allows it.

Whereas that stipulation in Mary Shelley’s original “modern Prometheus” looks to turn the mirror onto the public’s monstrousness in a general sense, Story’s version is much more specific. Because to an innocent little girl like Jada (Amani Summer) next door, Chris is the same man she always knew. To see him is to simply say, “Hello.” To Vicaria and her father (Chad L. Coleman’s Donald), Chris is forever changed. They know he was dead. They know what the decomposition of his flesh means. Their fear makes him a threat.

Now move the dial even further to Chris’ former trigger-happy gang and the police and it doesn’t matter who the man/monster in front of them is/was. Kango’s guys see an unknown commodity that puts their earnings at risk. The cops see a nameless Black body they have zero problem shooting first and asking questions never. It’s thus a very charged rendition of a familiar tale with numerous metaphors and comparison points littered throughout.

There’s Vicaria going up against a white teacher who refuses to say her name correctly and calls security on her for daring to ask questions and demand answers. There’s Jada’s brother about to open the door for an obviously enraged policeman before Donald stops him and throws the deadbolt knowing there’s a good chance that warrant-less cop starts shooting under the bigoted belief their very existence makes them monsters too.

With great practical makeup and effects to up the horror quotient once Chris is set loose on the neighborhood amongst adults refusing to believe he’s anything but an abomination (bringing someone back from the dead isn’t possible so why would anyone think otherwise?), Story’s film does a really good job pulling Frankenstein into the twenty-first century.

I do think the genre conventions get in the way of fully mining the psychology of the updated concept, though. Too often Hayes’ Vicaria is forced into fight or flight scenarios that prevent the whole from escaping its surface thrills. We know she’s suffering and struggling to find her place in a world that dismisses her genius and imagination on sight, but it feels like exposition so that the premise can deliver its kills rather than the larger point. Because there’s also something to Vicaria’s actions making her complicit to the overall prejudice that seems glossed over (Kango and Reilly Brooke Stith’s Aisha do approach it). Hopefully our knowledge of that complexity sparks conversations on the way home regardless.