On Friday, a new film hits Amazon Prime fresh from the Sundance Film Festival. Mariama Diallo’s debut feature, “Master,” takes on racial politics at a prestigious East Coast university using the horror genre. “Master” weaves together the story of three Black women navigating the microaggressions, and macroaggressions, of life in academia, with the added complication of a very real ghost story whispered through the halls of “Ancaster University.” Regina Hall plays the Gail Bishop, a professor at the university and new House Master in one of the freshman dorms, struggling to balance her career and friendships along with her responsibilities to her students. There’s also some very strange and supernatural events afoot, particularly with one of her freshman residents, Jasmine (Zoe Renee).
It’s an incredible performance from Hall, who has been ably hopping genres throughout her career. From rom-coms to parodies to indie dramas, Hall can do it all, and this wasn’t even her only film at Sundance 2022. The megachurch comedy “Honk For Jesus. Save Your Soul” also bowed at the fest, and will be hitting theaters and Peacock on Labor Day. Plus, Hall is one of three women hosting the Oscars this year, alongside Wanda Sykes and Amy Schumer, on March 27th.
Hall’s versatility should come as no surprise if you’ve been following her career over the past 20 years. She broke out in the “Scream” parody “Scary Movie” in 2000, and appeared in all four of the franchise’s installments (all available to rent on digital platforms). But Hall has proved time and again that’s she more than just a comedian, and in “Master,” she returns to the horror genre, this time in a more serious tone. It’s one of her finest performances.
Hall has bopped back and forth from broad comedies to indie dramedies with ease, vacillating between projects like “The Best Man Holiday,” (streaming on HBO Max) a sequel to 1999’s “The Best Man,” (streaming on Starz), with titles like “People, Places, Things” (streaming on Peacock and Kanopy) another Sundance flick, showing off new sides of her range, and co-starring opposite Jemaine Clement, in this gentle romance about a single dad learning to date again.
In her career, Hall has worked frequently with collaborators like director Malcolm D. Lee, and taken risks on up-and-coming indie directors. For every raucous “Girls Trip” (rentable on all digital platforms), there’s a sensitive and nuanced turn in a film like Andrew Bujalski’s “Support the Girls” (streaming on Showtime and Kanopy), in which Hall plays the beleaguered manager of a small town “breastaurant,” finding shades of dark humor and humanity in every crevice.
In the past few years, Hall has also shone on the small screen, including in the 1987-set Wall Street crash comedy “Black Monday,” on Showtime, and the wellness-retreat drama “9 Perfect Strangers” on Hulu. But, if you’ve been a fan of Hall for long enough, you know that she was also on the groundbreaking late '90s series “Ally McBeal,” created by David E. Kelley, which is currently streaming on Hulu. It might time for a rewatch, to conclude a streaming spin through the best of the incomparable Regina Hall.
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