Master is about the lives of a handful of black women on a traditionally all-white prestigious university. The ladies not only have to deal with subtle microaggressions but also some pretty big macro ones too. Oh, and there’s a witch maybe lurking about… so… maybe a racists witch? Maybe just a regular run-of-the-mill evil witch? Or, should I say, a ghost of a witch. Who might be racist?

I’ve seen very few films that get atmosphere so right while presenting a random bunch of muddled storylines. If the film had just picked one lane and, say, been a story about the discomfort and alienation these black women feel on this campus, it’d have been really good. Keep the suspense, the uncertainty, and the mood. Hell, eject the blatant racism and just stick with the discomfort of the microaggressions and it’d have been a cool little subtle flick.

But it also wants to be about a curse and a witch or a ghost witch or something. Which may or may not exist… I get that the movie is playing with the mythology and lore of the school, but I just didn’t think A) this storyline was remotely scary at any point, and B) it jibed well with the racism themes. Unless the witch is racist, I suppose. Or the witch ghost. Whatever.

I did love the way the movie ends though… with a sense of depressing understanding and surrender. That this sense of dread and displacement ain’t going anywhere. It’s an excellent punctuation on the bubbling paranoia and dread throughout the film.

But man they really needed an editor or someone to just say they needed to pick a lane. Don’t give me a haunted campus when you have the perfect and proven ability to tell a suspenseful story without it. But I think I ultimately came down on the side of liking the important part of the film… but hard to ignore the imperfections.

Score: 78