Sundance 2022: Master Review

This will be one of many reviews during this year’s Sundance Film Festival, to keep up with our latest coverage, click here.

Master focuses on the lives of three women; a freshman, a professor, and a Master of Studies, while they navigate their careers at Anncaster College, a predominantly white school. As Jasmine (Renee), a freshman, settles into her dorm, she quickly discovers that it once belonged to a former student who was haunted by the school’s ghost eventually resulting in her death, and soon begins to venture down a similar path. Gail (Hall), one of Anncaster’s Master of Studies, attempts to break racial barriers created within the college as the first woman of color in her position while Liv (Gray), a professor, seeks to call out the systemic and passive racism that has permeated the college’s culture for centuries.

Through these narratives, Master attempts to tell a much deeper and more subtle story of discrimination and marginalized diversity that often feels reductive for the film it’s constantly pulling away to be. In truth, the film feels as if it wants to explore much deeper themes supported with well-crafted cinematography while encompassed within a horror film. And while the two can coexist, in this case, they work against each other delivering two very different halves of what should’ve been a cohesive whole. Meanwhile, its final third offers a jarring twist that feels dissimilar to everything preceding it and yet adds a layer of interest that when resolved becomes more frustrating than satisfying. Renee, Hall, and Gray do their best in their respective roles to carry the convoluted plot forth, however, they are unable to escape its frenetically constructed screenplay.

Master stumbles due to its indecisiveness to choose which path of storytelling would best serve its message. Through this process, it offers moments of promise when fully leaning into either its psychological thriller tendencies or its more dramatic elements, but any progress or goodwill the film garners on behalf of its audience is thwarted in its final moments which land with a discouraging thud. There are encouraging fragments, both with the film’s cast and its solid production value. Yet, it is unable to truly hit the mark that it was aiming for.

In the end, Master buckles under the weight of the subject matter it attempts to address and as a result, it does no justice both for the theme and genre it selects to carry its narrative.

*still courtesy of Sundance

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