Bomani J. Story’s horror film is one part family drama, one part Frankenstein, and one part Re-Animator. Deep down beneath its grue and gore is a very relatable and heartbreaking tale of a family divided by death and a girl determined to beat it. Much of “The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster” is centered around young Vicaria, a literal mad genius who is convinced that she can cure death, and like most mad geniuses, she finds out along the way that what is dead should stay dead, and that her madness might be symptomatic of the world she lives in.
Vicaria is a brilliant teenager who believes death is a disease that can be cured. After the brutal and sudden murder of her brother, she embarks on a dangerous journey to bring him back to life. Inspired by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, THE ANGRY BLACK GIRL AND HER MONSTER thematically challenges our ideas of life and death.
Director and Writer Bomani J. Story delivers something of a near flawless horror gem that’s first and foremost about humanity, and then about delivering a good horror tale. Vicaria is a young girl who has spent her live surrounded by death, so when she grows up she views it as her number one foe. Like most villains, the road to hell is paved with her good intentions, and she can never quite wrap her head around her trauma. She’s experienced so much death and pain and sadness, but views it more as another life obstacle rather than something she has to come to grips with emotionally and mentally. From the starts Vicaria isn’t so much a protagonist as she is someone who is capable of immense destruction.
The sad part is that in the neighborhood she lives in, that destruction is inevitably drowned out by the violence that seems to flood her streets every night. Vicaria and her family are lost in a perpetual cycle of violence and grief, all of which are a result of the world they’re stuck in. Vicaria is a brilliant student who is chastised by her Caucasian teacher, her surname is German—probably originating from her ancestors’ slave masters, as her father proclaims, and the education system she’s in doesn’t encourage her thirst for knowledge. She takes to basically becoming a literal body snatcher in hopes of stitching together her big brother who died during a gang bang. Her demented project inevitably disrupts the little peace she has in her life, and soon she falls under the radar of her local drug dealer.
Director and writer Story has a lot to say about the ghettos, systemic racism, the faulty and corrupt educational system, and so much more. She knows how to punctuate what are the true horrors in Vicaria and her family’s life (take one scene where police try to enter their home during a peaceful dinner), while also painting Vicaria’s inevitable Frankenstein monster in to something of a twisted result of the problems people in her position face daily. The question becomes: can she really beat death or will she, like everyone in her life, be imprisoned in the cycle of hitting the literal reset button in order to beat the world?
Along with Bomani J. Story’s tight direction and rich writing, the collective cast is all very good, including Chad Coleman as Vicaria’s long suffering father, and Laya DeLeon Hayes. She is a genuine scene stealer as the tragic Vicaria whose madness might ultimately be her own undoing. “The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster” is an important and heartbreaking horror tale with a clever twist on an age old concept that also succeeds as an indictment on society.
In Theaters on June 9th; It will be available to on Demand and On Digital on June 23rd. It will be streaming on Shudder and ALLBlk on a later date, to be announced.