The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster (2023)

Not rated because it is a Shudder Original, but it has the trappings of most conventional horror.  I'm pretty sure that this would get an R for gore alone.  There is a decent amount of language, some of it more intense than others.  But this is a commentary on the normalization of violence.  While there are definitely elements that are exaggerated for the sake of making a horror movie scary, the more upsetting violence are the grounded elements.  Again, I'm going to be writing this warning for a lot of the movies that I watch during the month of October, so just be aware of gore and violence.  Not rated.

DIRECTOR: Bomani J. Story

Do you realize how dumb I'm being right now?  Every day, some time during that day, I will make a list of all the things that I want to get done. Sometimes that list is written on a chalkboard, making it almost a contract.  Today, I knew it was going to be crazy.  I've been with the kids all weekend.  I love them to death, but it's been fairly standard to hear someone shouting for "Dad" about every few mintues.  I don't know why I thought that I would get time to hit some of the passion projects that I want to get done.  But I've been watching horror movies at night because my wife is out of town and I wanted to get laundry done.  So I started stacking up these movies that need to get blogged before I enter a very stressful week at work.  Don't worry.  If I actually do get this uploaded on Sunday night, be aware that I still have 28 Years Later to write about.

I have wanted to watch this one for a while.  Yes, you people who want to put me in a box, I did want to watch it because of the title.  I don't think I've made it even remotely a secret that I think that all art should be political because all art is already political by default.  I think the best thing that has happened to genre storytelling in the last decade is Jordan Peele's Get Out reminding us that genre storytelling should almost be accusatory.  With the wealth of now challenging horror films out there, with a title like The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster, it should have been right up my alley.  I'm not saying that it was bad.  This is an incredible functional horror movie that does some things very right.  I'm not attacking it from that front.  I'm just not sure that this movie is as cohesive and it almost needs to be.

Part of my frustration with the film is that it is applying the Frankenstein allegory for today.  If Victor Frankenstein lived in the projects during 2023, what would that look like?  Okay, I'm in for that.  For a guy who has taught Frankenstein for years (I should make it clear that I taught it when I taught sophomores, which I no longer do), I don't necessarily love every element of the story.  But the Frankenstein mythos has outgrown Mary Shelley's novel's roots.  It's actually become something of its own creation...pun intended.  But the one thing that all the many interpretations of Frankenstein have tried to at least make known is that the real monster of the story should be the doctor, not the creature. 

I'm not saying that The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster doesn't try to do that.  There's a line towards the end that really tried selling that more than the action of the piece does.  It's not that I don't feel sympathy for Chris for the majority of the movie.  I just don't think that there's much to damn Vicaria, who seems to be the heroic protagonist for the majority of the movie, despite the fact that everyone accuses her of desecrating graves...which is a valid accusation thrown her way.  

The thing about the novel is that, despite being an epistolary novel, we spend a lot of time with the creature.  That's what makes the story compelling.  As much as Victor is dictating the events that led him to go out onto that ice, the really interesting story is that the creature is self-defined.  He is reborn as tabula rasa, shunned by his creator and becoming his own moral compass.  So what if that moral compass is vengeful and violent.  He becomes this thing, divorced from his parent and angry as heck.  That's not Chris in this story.  We actually know too little about Chris because The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster is about Vicaria from start to finish.  If anything, Vicaria's tale is a better epistolary film because we can only know (for the most part) what is going on from Vicaria's perspective.  That's kind of annoying because it makes Vicaria almost flawless.  She's blackmailed by a drug dealer into doing morally grey things, but that is only because she is protecting the people around her.

And the problem lies in one thing that should seem pretty innocuous.  If Shelley's Frankenstein is an accusation of irresponsible science attempting to replace God, Vicaria's motive for trying to bring back life is incredibly sympathetic.  She keeps losing people in her life to gang and police violence.  She sees death as a disease and she chooses her brother Chris as her subject to reanimate.  Yes, she sees this as scientific conquest.  But the reason that she chose Chris is because she misses her brother.  Because she has an intimate relationship with Chris, it's not that she just raised anyone. She wants to see her brother again.  

That changes far too much of the story.  It's admirable what she's doing.  If anything, we're rooting for Vicaria to gain her freedom so she can take care of her brother.  When Chris starts murdering, it's not out of vengeance for a world that has rejected him.  It's because there's a monster inside of him.  Vicaria's speech at the end of the film says that Chris isn't Chris, but rather a monster defined by his environment.  I don't really see that.  Vicaria initially embraces Chris (an improvement over what Victor does upon the Creature's reanimation.  I never really knew why Victor Frankenstein feared his own creation upon its rising considering that's what he was working for that.  You'd think that he would be able to steel himself against that given that he was working on that project for ages).  It's actually really weird that she fears Chris as time progresses.  The second time she sees him, she's terrified of him, which doesn't really make a ton of sense considering both Vicaria's characterization coupled with the fact that she didn't see Chris as a monster.  Also, Chris's dad never saw him as a monster, and Chris just murders the heck out of him.

Maybe the movie had too much time to realize that it had to be scary and that the original Frankenstein isn't so much terrifying as it is fascinating.  There are a bunch of moments in the film that seem like Shudder put pressure on this movie to be scary.  Let's have the conversation about Jada.  Jada is the spookiest thing in the movie.  The things that Chris does is upsetting.  A man getting a machete to the clavicle is upsetting.  But Jada is straight up spooky.  She keeps saying these things mirroring the little girl from Poltergeist.  Like, it's cool and super spooky.  But do you know what else it is?  Absurd.  It's like Jada became aware that she was in a horror movie, so she starts acting all spooky.  I get it, kids can be scary in horror movies.  But she just does these things that have nothing to do with the fact that Chris is out there, ripping people up.

And let's get to the elephant in the room.  I wanted this movie to be a commentary for 2023...even thought it is 2025.  The movie gets political.  There are some phenomenal things said about police violence, the whitewashing of history, and the importance of education.  But none of those things really are important to the main story.  This movie took a story and decided to skin the present day in an inherently political climate.  It named the movie The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster.  But I'll be honest with you.  Vicaria isn't exactly that angry of a Black girl.  She has her moments.  I want to make a comparison between Vicaria and another angry Black girl, also in a streaming original: Riri Williams.  

I loved Ironheart.  I like the comics.  I like the show.  I don't want these stories in competition, but I can't help but make the comparison, mainly because they are both about teenage Black girls in STEM situations where they aren't really supported by the world while White characters are encouraged to advance.  What I liked about Ironheart is that it took the Tony Stark mythos, a story about White privilege, and showed what happens when a Black girl tries to do the same thing.  The entire show is about how she has to cut corners and challenge her own moral codes just so she can be an unrecognized genius.  Now, apply the same story to The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster and you kind of don't get a commentary about how a Black girl is any different from Victor Frankenstein, except that she gets more screen time and has a more sympathetic reason for doing this.  

I don't want the movie to justify its political existence by telling me its politics.  I want the movie to show me its politics.  It does it sometimes, in brief flashes. But the reality of the whole thing is that it felt like it wanted to blend Frankenstein and The Wire.  And I believe that there is a version of this story that could really turn heads.  I just don't think we are challenged enough because the movie seemed to write itself off as a Shudder Original. 

It's good...not great.