Film Review – Master

Writer/director Mariama Diallo has two very different films with “Master,” challenged to bring together a tale of a supernatural haunting and an inspection of diversity issues on a college campus, and all the complexity that situation entails. Diallo is incredibly ambitious with her screenplay, tackling big ideas on racial identity and relationships, and she also wants to creep out the audience, playing into trends concerning the distanced eeriness of “elevated horror.” “Master” has its strengths, primarily found in performances, which are uniformly excellent, giving the material a strong emotional push, also selling the creepiness of freak-out sequences. The feature is interesting, bringing up potent ideas on the state of higher education and tokenism, but Diallo has a difficult time deciding what kind of movie she wants to make, losing control of her vision as genre elements take time away from far more commanding human horrors. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com