The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster is a movie with a great title and and even greater ambitions. It brushes up against something really interesting and cool but it doesn’t have the follow-through to make it really special.

The flick is about a brilliant black teen girl living in the inner city. She’s experienced death one too many times and is convinced its a disease she can cure. And since her nickname is Mad Scientist, she starts by resurrecting her dead brother… on a slab… with lightning.

Yes, this is a Frankenstein story… adapted and moved in time and space and class. The first act is very interesting with a cool, blunt performance by its young star. Her character is brilliant and driven but when we see her experiments it gets pretty creepy. Themes of colonialism, education, socio-economic conditions, drugs, and the police are presented to let us know the flick has ideas.

Unfortunately, it mostly abandons these ideas by the end, turning into a pretty so-so generic slasher or creature feature. The ties to the book run dry and it winds up feeling more like a Re-Animator remake than Frankenstein. And the actual monster doesn’t look like much of anything… just an amorphous bloody mess, not approaching anything iconic or even particularly interesting.

I really wanted to love this movie based on its first act but it ultimately just turns into an average monster movie set in the hood. If they could have tied their ideas together it would have been much cooler and far more interesting. Instead, it’s a watchable entertainment that at least tries for awhile.

Score: 78