By Peg Aloi

Mariama Diallo’s film is a subtle, sure-handed thriller that nevertheless delivers a stunningly deft commentary on the enduring horror of racism and sexism.

Master, directed by Mariama Diallo. Screening at Kendall Square Cinema and Coolidge Corner Theatre. Streaming on Prime Video.

Regina Hall in Master.

This feature debut by filmmaker Mariama Diallo was one of the most powerful offerings I saw during the Sundance film festival this year. It’s a nuanced horror film, with quietly disturbing imagery and events that slowly increase in number and intensity. We learn early on that the setting of the film, a fictional college campus known as Ancaster, is adjacent to the Colonial witch trials. The location is probably Salem, Massachusetts (an impromptu night out in Boston is mentioned). Ancaster’s history goes back to the 18^th century, and it has a reputation for being elite and exclusive. Gail Bishop (Regina Hall) is a professor who’s recently been appointed the ‘master” of a historical dormitory. She is the first Black woman to hold the post, so she’s asked to give speeches to donors and is expected to visually bask in the honor at the behest of her department.

We next meet Jasmine (Zoe Renee), a newly-arrived freshman who we later learn is one of only eight students of color on campus. She’s welcomed by students working orientation (decked out in the yellow and blue school colors) who quip “we’ve got a live one.” They make a fuss when they learn that Jasmine is assigned to “the room,” rumored to be the site of hauntings by the ghost of Margaret Millet, who was accused of witchcraft and hanged on the campus grounds in the late 1700s. The witch’s ghost is said to reveal itself to one freshman student every year. It appears at precisely 3:33 a.m., according to legend, and the horrifying sight drives the student mad and leads to their demise. Despite having the feel of campus legend, at least one actual death is connected to the ghost: that of the college’s first Black student, a girl who who died by suicide in 1968. This disturbing lore fascinates Jasmine, who has a history of night terrors and sleepwalking.

At first, Jasmine has fun meeting new people and gets along fine with her new roommate. But when Professor Liv Beckman (Amber Gray) hands her an ‘F’ on an essay about The Scarlet Letter (the Nathaniel Hawthorne classic set during the witch trials era), Jasmine, valedictorian of her high school senior class, begins to feel singled out. Liv is up for tenure review and that is complicated by her friendship with Gail, which has become a source of friction because the other English department members (most of them white) think Liv’s publishing record is sub-par. Liv is an enigmatic presence, outspoken about her African-American heritage but mysteriously silent about her own personal history, which becomes the source of shocking revelations.

Both Jasmine and Gail are grappling with new roles (Jasmine as a new student, Gail as the new master). Both find that, as they navigate the mostly-white campus culture, they are being subjected to numerous microaggressions, faint at first, eventually terrifying. Gail tries to be a mentor to Jasmine, who has no family or friends nearby, and whose attempts to mingle with other students can’t soothe the pain of the increasingly blatant racist attacks she is subjected to. Eventually Jasmine feels completely isolated; she is seen working late into the night in the library, walking across a nearly empty campus in the dark, on edge and paranoid as she imagines what fresh indignity awaits her, haunted by the deaths that took place in her dorm room. Both women suffer from nightmares and start seeing disturbing visions around campus, some of them seeming to be ghosts from the past, others portents of their uncertain future in this uninviting place. The terror is all the more effective for being presented in a low-key manner, a perfect accompaniment to the “well-meaning” but insidious insults aimed at these women. Hall and Renee give powerful performances as women pushed to their intellectual and emotional limits, trapped in a system that, ironically, prides itself on protocols and decorum. A handful of innocuous seeming inter-titles, phrases like “Now more than ever,” offer a chilling precognitive summary of the scenes they precede.

Diallo’s film is a subtle, sure-handed thriller that nevertheless delivers a stunningly deft commentary on the enduring horror of racism and sexism. Charlotte Hornsby’s naturalistic but moody cinematography is very effective; the special effects don’t call attention to themselves. There’s a faint touch of the supernatural to Master: it feels like an exercise in folk horror arising out of a fertile contemporary ground for fear and evil: academia. The New England “witch country” setting is a potent one in cinema. It is an inescapable manifestation of colonialism. The specters and visions that beset Gail, Jasmine, and their forebears are built into the very foundation of this fictional campus, manifestations of the lingering power of centuries-old specters of hatred, racism, and misogyny. If these walls could talk, they’d be screaming.

Peg Aloi is a former film critic for the Boston Phoenix and member of the Boston Society of Film Critics. She taught film studies in Boston for over a decade. She writes on film, TV, and culture for web publications like Vice, Polygon, Bustle, Mic, Orlando Weekly, Crooked Marquee, and Bloody Disgusting. Her blog “The Witching Hour” can be found at themediawitch.com.