Mariama Diallo’s ‘Master’ Starring Regina Hall — Film Review
“Master,” the first feature film from writer-director Mariama Diallo, brings to cinematic life an unsettling yet honest account of Diallo’s internal experiences. Told through a horror lens, “Master” follows three Black women striving to find their place in a prestigious New England college built on the site of Salem-era Gallows Hill.
Gail Bishop (Regina Hall), just instated as “Master,” a dean of students, discovers what lies behind the school’s immaculate facade; first-year student Jasmine Moore (Zoe Renee) confronts a new home that is cold and unwelcoming; and literature professor Liv Beckman (Amber Gray) collides with colleagues who question her right to belong. Navigating politics and privilege, they encounter increasingly terrifying manifestations of the school’s haunted past… and present.
Diallo modeled the fictitious Ancaster college on the school she attended. A school that once used the term “Master,” which is associated with slavery and oppression, to address the head of a college. In a Sundance Q&A with Diallo, she stated: “part of the process of writing and making this film was asking some tough questions of myself; of how I was able to sustain four years of my life where I accepted this person into my life — at the very least with that title. What did it mean and why did it happen? Why didn’t I wake up?”
Woven into the film’s various narratives are themes of invisibility, alienation and loneliness felt by three very different yet connected characters trying to figure it out. Diallo’s skillful blend of tone, mood and Kafkaesque imagery conjure visceral, emotional and psychological responses. Painful as it is to watch (insert trigger warning here), one can’t help but wonder how painful it might’ve been for Regina Hall, Zoe Renee and Amber Gray to place themselves into the roles of Gail, Jasmine and Liv. All three actors deliver captivating and palpable performances leaving it up to viewers to decide what the women are actually experiencing and what is antagonizing them.
Diallo’s storytelling deliberately focuses on the lived experience of microaggressions and inequality using history and social reality to reiterate how racism exists and operates at the core of its institutions. “It’s not ghosts, it’s not supernatural, it’s America. And it’s everywhere.”
The cinematic suspense is orchestrated skillfully through sound, close ups, objects, shadows and lighting, which all provide the right amount of tension and a well-timed relief in the third act. What may come across as an inconclusive story, due to some unresolved plot lines and unexplained mysteries, actually allows the viewer to choose what to think and believe. My takeaway, on the film’s lingering layers, was the correlation to America’s unresolved history of racism. “Master” is a compelling story driven by women and told with personal urgency.
“Master” made its world premiere at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival in the U.S. Dramatic Competition section and will premiere on Amazon Prime on March 18th, 2022.
Mariama Diallo is a Brooklyn-based writer-director. Previous work includes the short films Hair Wolf (Sundance 2018) and White Devil (TIFF 2021), as well as HBO’s Random Acts of Flyness. She has been featured in Variety’s 10 Directors to Watch and Filmmaker magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film.
Director – screenwriter: Mariama Diallo
Producers: Joshua Astrachan, Brad Becker-Parton, Andrea Roa
Executive Producers: Regina Hall, Mariama Diallo, Sophia Lin, Terence Nance
Director of Photography: Charlotte Hornsby
Cast: Regina Hall, Zoe Renee, Talia Ryder, Talia Balsam, Amber Gray
Director of photography: Charlotte Hornsby
Production designer: Tommy Love, Meredith Lippincott
Costume designer: Mirren Gordon-Crozier
Editors: Jennifer Lee, Maya Maffioli
Music: Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe
Casting director: Jessica Daniels, Daniel Frankel
