FrightFest review – Noseeums
Black student Ember (Aleigha Burt), who has a mysterious past, is taken away for a girls’ weekend in the Florida back country by her roommate Tessa (Jasmine Gia Nguyen). Like Your Host, this makes a meal of a contemporary horror convention – the gang of young folks who go to a luxurious isolated retreat owned by the complete asshole in the group, with whom the others only hang out because they’re rich and connected. The queen bee in this case is Abigail (Tabby Getsy), a creepy-cute dimpled daughter of privilege, who has white girl minion Lexi (Jessie Roddie) along for backup.
This black-themed horror film isn’t quite cut-and-dried in its white people are EVIL messaging, with back and forth and attempts at being civil or even having fun before the claws come out – but Ember is properly attuned to microaggressions like always being asked to do menial chores like toting bags and being put in the smallest room with the broken air con. The film is probably at its best exposing privilege and thoughtlessness before it gets to actual malice. The nearer she gets to the site, the more Ember has flashes of historical backstory about black folks being dispossessed of this very property by white thugs – and clouds of bugs (noseeums are midges) get angry whenever she is reminded of a historical injustice. After a while, all the contemporary bickering – about whether white people should sing along to rap lyrics and how drunken games of ‘never have I ever’ are seldom a good idea in a gang with a stack of nasty secrets – is displaced by angry spirits and fairly rote bug attacks.
Noseeums has a TV movie-ish feel – with a particularly awkward segue into humour at the end and a slight fudge about its supernatural business, but it’s well-paced (and brief), well-acted (Getsy is splendidly venomous/entitled), has an interesting basic theme and manages a few scares. Written by Jason-Michael Anthony and Hendreck Joseph; directed by Raven Carter.
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