The Tokoloshe: Mythology and Modern Trauma

Posted on by vfdpixie

With the South African film industry making new strides to create opportunities for local and foreign filmmakers, director Jerome Pikwane tackles the horror genre with his first feature film The Tokoloshe.

Busi (Petronella Tsuma) is a desperate young woman who finds work at a derelict hospital as a night-shift cleaner. She must deal with a predatory manager Mr. Ruatomin (Dawid Minaar), jaded coworkers and young abandoned patients in order to make money to bring her sister from their troubled rural home to Johannesburg. One night, Busi comes across Gracie (Kwande Nkosi), a little girl who is tormented by a nasty entity called The Tokoloshe, known to prey on children. Busi takes pity on Gracie, and even though she deals with the trauma of her own family issues and abuse, she sneaks Gracie out to live with her, unwittingly bringing the angry Tokoloshe into her home. Busi must protect Gracie, battle this entity and her own troubles to survive life’s harsh realties.

Busi (Petronella Tsuma) dreads another night at work.

The most popular definition of the Tokoloshe is a hairy, lustful, elf-like creature from Zulu folklore who wrecks havoc on people, especially women and children, causing mischief or death. Pikwane successfully melds this mythological figure with the difficult subject matter of sexual abuse and rape. In several interviews, Pikwane said he wanted to represent misogyny and the patriarchy through his film and the figure of the Tokoloshe was key in representing the patriarchy and all the oppressive men in Busi’s life. His handling of the abuse Busi and Gracie suffered was thoughtfully done with a few moments of brutality along with flashbacks and eerie atmosphere, surrounding Busi with shadowy settings to represent the hidden corners of her psyche.

I loved that there were two black female leads in a modern horror dealing with a real issue in South African society (and beyond). Tsuma and Nkosi had wonderful chemistry as lost souls looking for redemption and safety, and for a low-budget film, Pikwane incorporated an artistic and slightly gothic feel, comparable to The Babadook and Under the Shadow that also dealt with trauma and mental distress in similar fashions. The use of effects for some decent jump scares was also well done, with a few subtle CGI moments building up to big the creature reveal.

The Tokoloshe was screened at the 7th Toronto Black Film Festival (proudly co-presented by the Blood in the Snow Canadian Film Festival), with one of the films producers, Cati Weinek in attendance. She talked about the rampant sexual abuse in South Africa and the need for Pikwane to address this through his film. She also mentioned the call for change with stereotypical roles for blacks in film, and she had great hopes for financing and creating more horror and films outside of the typical rom-com fare popular with South African audiences.

I think a lot of movie-goers will resonate with the characters and themes of The Tokoloshe. After having attended a talk given by Tarana Burke, founder of the #MeToo movement and advocate for sexual abuse survivors, I have to commend Jerome Pikwane and his co-writer Richard Kunzman for being real allies in the struggle for accountability. They’ve not only produced an encouraging debut horror feature with an exciting new director, but an important tool for creating dialogue about trauma.

Horror Noire: History Lesson, Validation and Hope for Black Horror

Posted on by vfdpixie

I am beside myself with relief, joy and optimism because my life as a black woman horror fan has been validated. When I watched horror films as a young person, I cringed when a black character appeared, certain they were going to be ridiculed, portrayed as a caricature, or something bad was going to happen to them. This was an internalized knowledge I didn’t have to think about, a feeling I had catalogued in my emotional bank because of my own experiences of trying not to be noticed lest someone started to ridicule or bully me, to the point where sometimes I was relieved there weren’t any black characters in a horror film so I could watch without the added anxiety as a person of colour. The origins of this programmed terror of misrepresentation has been vindicated and explained in the documentary, Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror based on Robin R. Means Coleman’s extensive tome on blacks in American horror films.

From the 1915 film The Birth of a Nation to the current day Get Out, horror films featuring black characters and actors have an historical significance in how we are seen in society at large. Means Coleman puts all of this in a book entitled Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films from the 1890s to Present. It’s an excellent read outlining decades of misrepresentation of blacks and different tropes (like the magical negro and the myth of blacks dying first in horror), up to the shift in the 90s with urban horror and how we reclaim our stories and representation. Directed by Xavier Burgin, Horror Noire encapsulates the subject matter presented by three film scholars and producers of the documentary: the author herself, Means Coleman, author and teacher Tananarive Due, and Ashlee Blackwell, writer and founder of graveyardshiftsisters.com. Actors like Tony Todd (Candyman), Ken Foree (Dawn of the Dead), Keith David (The Thing), Kelly Jo Minter (The People Under the Stairs); and directors like Jordan Peele (Get Out), Rusty Cundieff (Tales from the Hood 1 & 2) and Ernest K. Dickerson (Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight) explore the impact of their films and other classic horrors featuring blacks had, like Night of the Living Dead and Ganja and Hess, on themselves and American culture.

The inclusion of actors listed above as well as Miguel A. Núñez Jr. (The Return of the Living Dead) and Rachel True (The Craft) bring an honest behind-the-scenes account of how they viewed participating in the horror genre and what it meant to them as individuals. I especially loved True’s candid nature, and her appearance in the documentary is important given the recent controversy of her history of exclusion at conventions. If you think there’s a lot of information to take in, you’re right, but the pacing of the documentary is fantastic. The viewer can absorb information covered in the seven chapters of the book without feeling like you’ve missed something, and the discussions, commentary and visuals all complement each other so everything is easily digested.

For this Black History and Women in Horror Month, the fact that there are three black female scholars guiding the documentary is so empowering. They know what it truly means to be “the other” as they move through spaces that may not readily accept them which is key in their examination of blacks in horror. As black women, we are an unconsidered entity; our intelligence is often challenged, and worse yet, we aren’t normally thought of as the go-to for horror. This time, black women are center stage here, scholars who have made it a priority to explore the history of what blackness is in horror films. What’s also important is the expansion of the discussion to include films up to the here and now, and the hopefulness as we see young female directors Meosha Bean and Monica Suriyage talk about persevering and collaborating to make films that represent themselves properly.

Horror Noire (as both a documentary and book) needs to be added to every film studies syllabus. It’s a vital testament to how a society driven by white supremacy can destroy a people with perception and how we can take it back by reclaiming our representation. If that doesn’t work, as Núñez Jr. says, “Black is the new green”, and money talks, so here’s to more black horror making bank and history.

Watch it now on Shudder.com, and if you haven’t seen some of the films referenced in the documentary, they’re also available on Shudder (hooray!). There’s also a code for a 30-day free trial for the month of February (wihmx), so get your popcorn, tone those eye muscles and get to watching!

*Apologies-I’ve taken the troll bait. Horror Noire is also important addition to the education of those who insist on exclusionary tactics; masking their discomfort of including people of colour by saying horror is getting too political. Horror is and always has been political, and whether these folks want to learn from a discussion that addresses the mistakes of blindly accepting misrepresentation is up to them. I encourage viewers to challenge these archaic views in the review section of  Horror Noire on Shudder to set the record straight. And for those who are whining about other people of colour not being included, here are some bullet points:

  • This is about blacks in horror, based on a book about blacks in horror films and black history.
  • There is an insidious and defensive behaviour of denial exhibited by some white (and a handful of non-white) people who tries to diminish anything involving blacks and black people calling out misrepresentation, and it needs to stop, like right now because it’s boring, stale, and pointless.
  • If you want documentaries on misrepresentation of other people of colour in film, they are out there. I shouldn’t have to spell it out for these folks, because there is a thing called Google, but try The Bronze Screen and The Slanted Screen for starters.

Bird Box: Translating the Unseen to the Big Screen

Posted on by vfdpixie

The day I’ve dreaded for a long time is finally here. Bird Box, the 2014 post-apocalyptic horror debut novel by Josh Malerman, has been made into a film, and as a diehard fan of the novel, I’m here to give you my verdict after watching the highly anticipated Netflix holiday 2018 release.

Malorie (Sandra Bullock) is pregnant and not looking forward to being a mother. Amidst her life-changing situation, reports of people killing themselves after they see some sort of creature are flooding the airwaves, and soon her hometown. Malorie loses her sister to this threat, and finds refuge in a household of strangers. As the new house mates (who include John Malkovich as Douglas, Danielle Macdonald as fellow expectant mother Olympia, and Lil Rey Howery as Charlie) realize they cannot walk through the world sighted lest they go insane from these creatures, they struggle with this new normal of darkness and blindfolds. Over a span of five years, Malorie must find her maternal instinct, some hope and stay sane to navigate her blind escape to unaffected survivors on a treacherous river journey.

birdboxriver
Malorie rowing blind to safety.

Let’s get this out of the way: Bird Box was a book written in 2014 (see Rue Morgue Magazine’s book editor Monica S. Kuebler’s interview with Malerman in issue #146), long before A Quiet Place, and I’m pretty sure there’s a short film based on similar monsters screened at Toronto After Dark well before the mainstream horror hit too, but I digress. When I first read Malerman’s novel, I couldn’t put it down. I enjoy post-apocalyptic horror, and this hit close to home because Malerman plays with our fears of senseless violence as the world goes to hell in a handbasket. Logically, we know we can die at any moment, but he uses fear’s viral nature and the terrifying notion of our sense of sight as the cause for our demise. Malerman also gets my devotion because he wrote a female protagonist with care and sensitivity male authors often miss.

It was difficult to envision a film made from such a compelling book about invisible predators from the viewpoint of blinded prey. Luckily Danish director Susanne Bier, who has a long list of awards and nominations for In A Better World, Brothers and The Night Manager, does an admiral job translating the feel of the narrative, and I love that her illustrious career now includes a horror film. Award-winning screenwriter Eric Heisserer, the pen behind Lights Out, Arrival, and his own film Hours, shows his strength at adapting books by staying close to the jumping timelines of Malorie before being a mother and after, most likely because he had reportedly been working on a script with Malerman as the book was being written. Along with Bier, they sustain the creeping dread I felt while reading the book. Issues arise however, when Heisserer streamlined and changed some of the plot and character development to tell the story visually. The narrative is specifically non-visual and internal and his script watered down some of the more chilling moments in the novel, like the double birthing scene which is tonally quite different from the book due to the lack of creature involvement.  The ending was also far too safe and feel-good.  If you’ve read the book, you know what I mean.  I will applaud the filmmaker though for not giving us the creatures dead on since it would have, as Bier puts it in one interview, been the wrong decision, making the creatures laughable instead of frightening.  Instead, they gave us some rough sketches drawn by the sniveling rescue Gary (Tom Hollander), a conniving madman intent on showing everyone his crazed vision.

Even though the characters veer away from those in the book, the ensemble cast is surprisingly good: Malkovich was entertaining as the self-serving curmudgeon Douglas, and while Bullock played Malorie with a sufficient vigor, I found her portrayal of the character’s coping mechanisms wooden instead of stoic. I wanted to see more of B.D. Wong who played Douglas’ neighbour Greg, but AHS’s Sarah Paulson as the warmer, more feminine foil to sister Malorie, as well as Trevante Rhodes (of Moonlight fame) as her sensitive love interest Tom rounded out the key and diverse cast. Tom, who was originally white in the book, is easily played by Rhodes proving the interchangeability of race and casting. It’s refreshing to see a black man play a sensitive, protective role written for a white character.

My one issue with the diverse casting is Charlie. He is a grocery store clerk who has valid theories about the creatures. Lucy (Rosa Salazar), one of the housemates, asks him in a condescending tone if he learned his theories working at the supermarket or perhaps even (gasp!) college. She is skeptical of his knowledge which is vast because he is clearly well-read, however it’s difficult for her to believe because he’s just a black grocery store clerk. The entire household dismisses his theories in one fell swoop when he reveals he’s writing a book, even though his research is probably closer to the truth than anything else. He also ends up sacrificing himself unnecessarily later to redeem his cowardly nature. This harkens back to an age-old assumption that blacks are less intelligent, cowardly and disposable, and clearly misses the mark in an otherwise well-cast film.

charlie bird box
Charlie (Howery) freaks out as the group heads out to get supplies.

Overall, Bird Box is a mostly decent representation of a book that proves difficult to film, even if it’s getting mixed reviews.  While we squabble over whether we liked the film or the book better, this narrative is important now that there is a political meltdown worldwide. It’s as if the creatures are a manifestation of our greed, hate and turmoil, threatening us with self-destruction as the world’s issues come to a head, so here’s hoping we can eventually remove the blindfolds and look the monster dead in the eyes.

Escape Room: The Right Kind of Franchise Fodder

Posted on by vfdpixie

From derelict buildings to posh Victorian houses, escape rooms are all the rage, and they have been for several years now. Paying for someone to lock you in a room with a group of people so you can figure out an escape will help build spirit you never thought you had plus you’ll get a chance to flex your problem-solving skills. But what if it’s not all fun and games, and the reality of the timer running out is an actual death? This situation is posed with Escape Room, and it’s a nail-biting ride.

Zooey (Taylor Russell) is a shy, college student who is brilliant and a loner. She’s stuck in her dorm for Thanksgiving while everyone leaves for the break. She receives a mysterious puzzle box which she quickly figures out how to open, only to find an invitation to compete in an escape room adventure for $10,000. Zooey isn’t the only one who gets a box. Jason (Jay Ellis) a go-getting financial whiz, Ben (Logan Miller) a down on his luck grocery clerk, Amanda (Deborah Ann Woll) an ex-soldier, Danny (Nik Dodani) the uber-nerd, and Mike (Tyler Labine) a jovial blue-collar fella all figure out the cubed puzzle and end up in an industrial building where the game begins in the waiting room. They soon learn the mysterious makers of the escape room mean business when they’re almost roasted alive in the first challenge. So begins their life or death race to the finish as they work their way room to room, revealing more about each person and the invisible burdens they struggle with.

The players in a bad spot. (Sony Pictures)

The film starts with a bang as Ben tries to figure out how to get out of a library before he’s crushed by a moving wall. It’s a frantic few minutes, putting you on edge immediately and never loses the intensity throughout. Waiting to see what clues characters found and how they related to each of their pasts was fantastic and created a puzzle within a puzzle. And speaking of puzzles, the cast fit in perfectly with great performances. Canadian actor Taylor Russell (seen on numerous shows like Falling Skies and Netflix’s Lost in Space) is riveting as the shy loner Zooey who clears all the puzzle hurdles with ease and is a classic final girl. Other stand out performances came from Ellis (Insecure) and Woll (best known for True Blood), and we got the perfect amount of comedic relief from Labine, the veteran Canadian actor of Tucker and Dale vs Evil fame as well as a huge list of other notable roles. Kudos to director Adam Robitel for casting people of colour in a lead role, like, three, as well as an Asian detective played by Kenneth Fok. See? Not so hard, and the film is doing well at the box office and getting decent reviews with what seems like a teaser ending for a sequel if not a franchise (yes, please!). I also have to mention the production designer Edward Thomas who has worked on Doctor Who, The Sarah Jane Adventures and Torchwood. The sets were just brilliant and writers Bragi F. Shut and Maria Melnik came up with some great brainteasers to keep the audience guessing.

As a side note, my biggest joy received from this movie was the fact that I saw it with two young black girls: my great-niece and her cousin who nodded vigorously when I asked if they were pleased that the main character was a black girl. This is a moment that touched my heart because I know if I was their age, this would speak to me on a subconscious level. A black girl protagonist would have let me know without words that I could excel at math, I could be the smartest one in the room and not to feel ashamed about it. Actions speak louder than words and this time I got to see my sweet tween niece see someone like her winning on the big screen.

If you haven’t seen Escape Room yet, don’t miss out on it, not only because it’s a perfect Saturday night at the movies, but also for some fun, sustained suspense, people of colour in solid roles and a black final girl you can get behind.