The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster – Movie Review (3/5)

THE ANGRY BLACK GIRL AND HER MONSTER is a new horror fantasy movie. A modern and quite different take on the classic Frankenstein story. Read our full The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster movie review here!

THE ANGRY BLACK GIRL AND HER MONSTER is a horror movie coming out in theaters after premiering at SXSW in March 2023. It’s quite the genre-mix with both horror, fantasy, drama, and social commentary. All very elegantly combined to tell a very dark story.

The best way to describe it is probably as a modern take on the classic story about Frankenstein and his monster. It’s pretty much in the title. Also, with a runtime of 91 minutes, it stays on track and doesn’t delve into any unnecessary side plots. Everything is there for a reason.

Continue reading our The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster review below. Find it in theaters from June 9, 2023.

Inspired by Mary Shelley

Rather than say this is inspired by Frankenstein, it would make sense to say that The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster is inspired by Mary Shelley. She was also a young woman in a world that didn’t really listen to her. However, she was white and married which did help.

In The Angry Black Girl and Her Monsters, we meet Vicaria (Laya DeLeon Hayes). She is a brilliant teenager (as in pure genius) who believes death is a disease. And, it goes to reason, that a cure must be found. Just like for cancer or any other illness.

If not cured, then at least treated in some way.

When her brother is very brutally and suddenly murdered, she decides to put all her brilliance (and theories about curing death) to the test. It’s a dangerous test that includes quite a few of the elements that Victor Frankenstein used in Mary Shelley’s story.

For the record, I feel quite confident that Mary Shelley would’ve made the mad scientist a woman, if she was alive and writing her famous story today.

Which lives truly matter?

No, I’m not going into the whole “All lives matter”-debate. Though let me be completely clear, I am an #BlackLivesMatter person all the way. As someone who is part of the LGBTQ community, I’m used to hearing “Why don’t we have straight Pride?!” so that minority shaming and hate is nothing new.

In The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster, the story is very aptly set in the black community. And we’re not talking about the kind you’d see in The Cosby Show or Fresh Prince. And yes, I do know that my age is showing, so let me round out by saying we’re in a Boyz n the Hood setting.

Well, except darker and more brutal. That movie was from 1991. Now, more than three decades later everything seems to be worse for Black lives, not better.

The young anti-hero and title character of The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster is a young genius. But she’s surrounded by obstacles. One thing is how she’s treated in school, another is being surrounded by death, drugs, and violence where she lives.

How can she not feel that a cure for death is her only hope? Nobody else seems to care about all the death that surrounds her.

Watch The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster in theaters!

Writer and director Bomani J. Story has made a movie inspired by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, but still entirely it’s own. The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster challenges our ideas of life and death.

However, it also focuses on how family and love can – despite the ugly terrors of systemic pressure, – be reborn again. As brutal and direct as this movie is, it also focuses on the potential and responsibility of us as individuals.

This is the directorial debut of Bomani J. Story. Previously, he wrote the feature Rock Steady Row which World Premiered at the 2018 Slamdance Film Festival. This time around, his movie World Premiered at SXSW in 2023 and has already been nominated for (and won) several awards.

THE ANGRY BLACK GIRL AND HER MONSTER is out in Theaters on June 9, 2023. It will be On-Demand and Digital on June 23, 2023.

Finally, it will stream on ALLBlk and on Shudder at a later date. We’ll update this review with the streaming premiere date when we have it.

Details

Director: Bomani J. Story
Writer: Bomani J. Story
Cast: Laya DeLeon Hayes, Denzel Whitaker, Chad L. Coleman, Reilly Brooke Stith, Keith Holliday