Exactly. And 2021 too, probably.
I probably won't do this for every episode, but this one was special:
Lovecraft Country S01E05: "Strange Case"
Lovecraft Country has been a show of unevenness. For every great scene, there's one that feels too rushed and a little underwritten. For every fun horror trope it indulges in (a new one every episode!), there remains a feeling of missed opportunity. Basically, it feels like every episode could easily be a 90 minute movie, which would give everything some space to grow.
But the latest episode, which focuses on Ruby (Wunmi Mosaku), Leti's (Jurnee Smollett) sister who finds herself in possession of a tincture which allows her, a black woman, to turn into a white woman for a few hours. When she is the white woman (Jamie Neumann), she experiences the carefree life she has never been able to enjoy, especially not in the white spaces like the department store she's wanted to work at for forever. They recently hired a skinnier, more conventionally attractive black woman, and when Ruby gets a job there (incredibly easily, of course), she uses her position to berate that woman for not being an exemplar of her race. In this way, the show tackles the difficult subject of of respectability politics and intersectionality.
But the real reason why I'm telling you all of this is because Ruby's transformations back into her normal body are CINECAST!ing ROUGH. Like, maybe the grossest thing I've seen since the C-section scene in Prometheus. The CGI is impressive, and I couldn't really spot a problem with it, though they were smart to mostly do it in half-lit environments or out-of-focus in the background or foreground of images. Still, it's a truly revolting sight as Ruby's real self tears through the skin of her temporary white self. It's a traumatic transformation that really drives home how different these two selves are, how thin and transient her white-self is and how insistent her blackness is. Invoking
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in the episode's title does some preparation for what you're about to witness, but I've not seen a version of that story told so profoundly nor with such vigor.
I was surprised and delighted, then, when the director's name appeared at the top of the end credits and I found out that
The Watermelon Woman's Cheryl Dunye was responsible for the horrific hour I had just endured. There's not much in
The Watermelon Woman to suggest such ability with body horror, but I'd like to see her tackle a movie-length body horror story now. She clearly has the skills to incorporate the truly gross with the thematically interesting. A modern Cronenberg, I'd say, and that's as high praise as I can give a director.
A-
- Terrifying