"The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster" makes for a fresh, socially urgent take on "Frankenstein"

The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster (2023)

“Frankenstein” gets a new lease on life in “The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster,” a fresh, socially urgent take on Mary Shelley’s classic horror tale. Ostensibly, writer-director Bomani J. Story reimagines Dr. Victor Frankenstein as a Black teenage girl. Her name is Vicaria, played by an appealing Laya DeLeon Hayes (TV’s “The Equalizer”) with a mix of stubbornness, smarts, and vulnerability. Only 17 years old, Vicaria has grown up in death’s shadow. Since her mother died in the crossfire of a shooting (to which she was present) and her older brother Chris (Edem Atsu-Swanzy) was also shot dead recently, Vicaria sees death as a disease. Her hypothesis? There is a cure. It’s an age-old thesis, but “The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster” feels very contemporary. 

Around her housing-project community, Vicaria is known as a “mad scientist.” She is highly intelligent with an interest in science and a penchant for thinking outside of the box. Her morbidly challenging ideas even make her white teacher become combative, to the point that Mrs. Kempe (Beth Felice) has security remove her from class. Vicaria might be on to something, though. To everyone else, her brother’s murdered body went missing, but Vicaria actually keeps Chris in a condemned electrical storage room (her lab). In her experiments on Chris’ body with electricity (along with other body parts she's gathered), Vicaria’s hooded monster gets reanimated and gets loose, delivering savage violence on those who deliver violence in the neighborhood. Is Vicaria a monster for creating a monster, or has society made her one?

This is a modestly innovative and resourcefully made feature debut from filmmaker Bomani J. Story, told within a specific context and with an ambitious vision that never feels like stitched-together spare parts. The unfortunately all-too-common crime in Vicaria’s neighborhood plays a significant part in this monster allegory, not unlike “Candyman” (both the 1992 film and the 2021 sequel/reboot will do). “The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster” is about challenging Mother Nature and the irreversibility of death, but it’s all rooted in a tragic reality where systemic racism and cyclical violence cannot be denied. It makes sense why Vicaria does what she does, seeing her own dad (Chad Coleman) now addicted to the product of the local gang run by drug dealer Kango (Denzel Whitaker). There may be a literal monster, but the allegorical nature of it all still never feels heavy-handed or too on-the-nose. 

“The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster” has a Disney Channel-type premise that you just have to go along with—chalk it up to weird science—but the results are bloodier and tougher than “Frankenweenie.” Bomani J. Story has a great visual eye and puts some impressive practical effects on display, and even the more-conventional jump scares still startle. Laya DeLeon Hayes makes the biggest impression, as she should, while some of the supporting characters are only given cursory development; part of that may come from the script feeling like a short story being stretched to an already-compact 92 minutes. One will never understand the Black experience without being Black, but “The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster” comes very close to echoing the anger that’s felt in America. In the movie, there's at least a monster for catharsis. 

Grade: B -

RLJE Films and Shudder released “The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster” (92 min.) in select theaters on June 9, 2023, followed by an on-demand and digital release on June 23, 2023.