"Karen" can be entertainingly bonkers trash but it's still trash

Karen (2021)


We all know a Karen—even a smart and kind one—but it’s not a great time to be named Karen, now that it has the negative connotation of being a nosy, entitled, pedantic, irrational racist who likes complaining to the manager. Now that we have a movie named “Karen” about a Karen named Karen, there is something ripe for “SNL” parody here, or in defter hands, a satirical dark comedy. But writer-director Coke Daniels has something else in mind, like a straight-ahead “…from Hell” thriller that wants to be exploitative for the sake of thrills and say something incisive about racial injustice in America. There’s no mistaking “Karen” for anything but a bad film, albeit one that comes with an asterisk for being as entertainingly bonkers and trashy as a Lifetime Original movie can be.


In case one expects any subtlety here, “Karen” sets things straight right away. A white woman washes away the words, “Black Lives Matter,” written in chalk on the street and scrubs them away with a push broom. That would be the titular Karen Drexler, played by a predatory Taryn Manning donning a “Can I speak to the manager?” wig and preppy pearls. (Even the title card puts a Karen silhouette in the counter of the letter A and a drop of blood on the K.) She is a widowed stay-at-home mom with two kids and too much time on her hands. She has no job, besides being the ball-busting HOA president of her Atlantic suburbs called Harvey Hill, of course, named after the Confederate general during the Civil War. It might be time for some change. Enter Malik (Cory Hardrict) and Imani (Jasmine Burke), a gainfully employed Black couple new to the neighborhood. Karen wastes no time self-installing security cameras aimed directly at her new neighbors’ house. She introduces herself, but how dare they leave their trash cans at the curb after the trash has already been picked up. The micro-aggressions eventually escalate into Karen getting her brother Mike (Roger Dornan), a corrupt police officer, involved in some textbook racism. 


The main problem with “Karen” is Karen herself. Taryn Manning (“Crossroads” fans rejoice!) is surely committed to putting a human skin on a walking cliché and hitting the one note that Karen has on the page. She may look human, but as written, directed, and acted, this Karen is all caricature with monstrous features. She’s petty, she says “you people” a lot, she ignorantly jokes that Imani is “slaving away in the kitchen,” and she’s just a terrible, horrible bitch of a person. The racism doesn’t even stop there when Karen stops a trio of young men (one of which actually lives in the same neighborhood) walking through her community because of the color of their skin; she plays the victim, crying on command and forcing the endangerment in her voice when calling her brother. When writer-director Coke Daniels ends up giving Karen a little backstory that may vaguely hint at why she is the way she is, it feels shoehorned in, and we’re back to Karen breaking into her neighbors’ home with a loaded gun.


“Karen” could have been more than it is, but it’s just black and white, figuratively speaking. As it should be, the film is clearly on the side of Malik and Imani. Cory Hardrict and Jasmine Burke are appealing to watch, and they have chemistry, even if the contrived plot mechanics work against their happiness. Perhaps in another movie without a Karen of a neighbor, Malik and Imani could raise a family and be happy. Among the film's few self-reflexive moments, there is one amusing bit at Malik and Imani’s housewarming party. Karen practically invites herself, of course, and when she shows up, wouldn’t you know that one of Malik’s buddies recognizes her as the Karen that got him kicked out of a local restaurant for talking too loudly for her ears. He’s incredulous when he asks, “So Karen is a ‘Karen’?” Art that is in-your-face and on-the-nose shouldn't instantly be deemed worthless, but “Karen” doesn’t feel so much like art as it does a self-important PSA and a flat, ham-fisted reenactment of tumultuous Twitter discourse. Now, can we please see a manager?


Grade: D +


Quiver Distribution is releasing “Karen” (89 min.) in select theaters and on VOD on September 3, 2021.

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