'Spell' Review
R: Violence, disturbing/bloody images, and language
Runtime: 1 Hr and 32 Minutes
Production Company: Paramount Players
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Director: Mark Tonderai
Writer: Kurt Wimmer
Cast: Omari Hardwick, Loretta Devine, Lorraine Burroughs, John Beasley, Andre Jacobs
Release Date: October 30, 2020 (Video on Demand)
While flying to his father's funeral in rural Appalachia, an intense storm causes Marquis to lose control of the plane carrying himself and his family. He soon awakens wounded, alone, and trapped in Ms. Eloise's attic. Eloise claims she can nurse him back to health with a Hoodoo figure she's made from his blood and skin. Unable to call for help, Marquis desperately tries to break free from her dark magic and save his family from a sinister ritual before the rise of the blood moon.
If there’s anything remotely good — if not great — about this movie, it’s Loretta Devine. Loretta Devine is one of those seasoned actresses who can put a smile on your face with her sweet, upbeat enthusiasm. As Ms. Eloise, a Hoodoo lady antagonist, her performance is energetic enough to keep you slightly invested in the film. The material she’s given is absolutely atrocious, but she really tries her hardest to hold this picture together. Omari Hardwick is also a talented and charismatic performer.
That being said…
I, for one, love Black horror when done right. However, this post-Get Out era where Black audiences are constantly being manipulated by horror flicks made to make us seem powerful when in reality they’re abhorrently distasteful — if not flat out offensive — has gotten on my final nerve. We recently had to deal with Antebellum, which was a heaping pile of horseshit that angered the shit out of me. Now we get Spell, which could easily be Antebellum’s drinking buddy because they’re in the same realm of offensive garbage masked as fresh new horror films.
Spell is like an over-the-top Black version of Stephen King’s Misery that tries to evoke a Jordan Peele aesthetic but is written on a Tyler Perry level of awful. While it’s obviously trying to portray an uncomfortable Get Out-meets-Misery situation, both of those films were able to establish an identifiable sense of dread with their respective concepts and set-up. Spell doesn’t. Misery had a gradual build-up, character backgrounds, and a claustrophobic winter setting that gave you an unnerving sense of dread. Get Out played upon the fear of a Black man meeting his white partner’s family. Spell plays on the niche — if not entirely non-existent fear — of a successful Black person from the north being trapped in the backwoods of Kentucky with Black Southerners who practice Hoodoo. There’s no establishment of Marquis being prejudiced towards Black country people, even on a classist level. Hell, part of Marquis’ upbringing was being physically abused by his dad just for having a brain of his own. Spell fails to establish any real sense of character for Marquis and his family. Because he’s successful, he’s looked down upon by these backwoods country folk and is referred to as having an “uppity” or “house nigga” mentality. The worst part is that there’s no context to Marquis’ situation; he just wakes up in the hospitality of Ms. Eloise, which is completely random and so over-the-top that it fails to deliver any sense of terror, partly because of her sweet nature. If anything, the captive should’ve been Marquis’ son; in the first act, his son is shown to have prejudice towards country people.
The film doesn’t really provide a natural sense of uneasiness, especially given that the shot composition tries too hard with different wide shots, lens flares, and closeups to evoke an uncomfortable atmosphere. Director Mark Tonderai bends over backward trying too hard to make this situation feel scary, but the shitty writing dilutes his efforts. Not only does it rip off elements from Get Out — a major one being a silent buff character named Big Henry who serves as Eloise’s righthand man, similar to Walter from the aforementioned film — but it also relies heavily on trite stereotypes of Black Southerners in a distasteful manner that feels like it was written by a:
OH WAIT, IT IS!
This is Kurt Wimmer, the sole screenwriter who wrote a 2020 horror movie about Black voodoo Southerners being prejudiced and violent towards Black northerners because they have money and are successful and “can afford Obamacare”. Oh yes, that’s an actual line in the movie.
At this point, I don’t feel like I need to explain any further as to why this movie is abhorrently disgusting. Aside from it being a formulaic horror film that doesn’t have a genuinely scary premise and is entirely full of cliches, Spell is another one of those horror movies that does exactly what I, and many other Black audiences, despise: provide a soulless, shallow attempt to manipulate the Black horror crowd that loved Jordan Peele’s Get Out. It tries to be smart while being written by a White dude who doesn’t know jack shit about the Black experience, depicting nothing but cringe, shallow stereotypes along with graphic, disturbing imagery of Black mutilated bodies, trauma, and pain because that’s exactly what they like to do. It doesn’t help that this was released under Paramount Pictures’ “Paramount Players” label, which is, and I quote from Deadline, “committed to creating hit genre films from unique, contemporary voices and properties.” Oh man, go fuck yourselves.
The best thing I can say about Spell — outside of the performances by Hardwick/Devine and the fact that it’s barely 90 minutes long — is that it didn’t piss me off as much as Antebellum did. That being said, Spell is still a huge heaping pile of offensive, shallow white Hollywood studio horseshit that I advise Black audiences to avoid. To bring it back to 2013 cinema, watching Spell is like watching InAPPropriate Comedy after the unspeakable pain that was Movie 43. It’s offensive garbage that just keeps kicking you while you’re already down.
