Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Octavia Spencer, Diana Silvers, Juliette Lewis, McKaley Miller, Cory Fogelmanis, Gianni Paolo, Dante Brown, Tanyell Waivers, Dominic Burgess, Heather Marie Pate, Tate Taylor, Luke Evans, Margaret Fegan, Missi Pyle, Allison Janney, Kyanna Simone Simpson, Andrew Matthew Welch.

Revenge is a peculiar dish, one that as the saying goes you must be prepared to dig two graves for, or at least understand that you have to share the plate and all the trimmings that go with it if you want to receive the momentary glimpse of satisfaction that is on offer.

Revenge simmers, the object of your ire may have long forgotten about what they did to you to earn such fierce devotion to their downfall but the memory lingers, hones itself on the knowledge that the opportunity will present itself one day and that it will have been worth the anticipation.

The idea of revenge though also is one that finds way to corrupt the mind of the one doing the waiting, playing with the fires of madness, destroying any chance that the soul can feel itself become cleansed of hatred and loathing, it carries on beyond the person who committed the deed and becomes instead a focus for the next generation to be tainted; the sins of the parents hidden away in the basement of horrors that await.

Unlike many revenge based horrors, MA finds a way to bypass the usual idea of madness as a place to exact some fiendish plot which will end up in an orgy of unyielding fawning to those who see the genre as a place to glorify the gore fest that is unrelenting and admittedly not required in modern cinema. Instead what the team behind the film have done is weave in the idea of inversion to the narrative, taking the gothic horror romance of the mad woman in the attic and turning it on its head, giving Octavia Spencer’s character of Sue Ann the reason behind her madness as one of sexual embarrassment, public humiliation, and inverted racism.

The point of a good horror is not to place the audience into a realm where the fantastic becomes the shocking entertainment but instead can be seen in the ordinary, the delicate push on the borders of sanity. It is the comparison between for example A Nightmare on Elm Street and The Shining, one is based in surreal fear, the other in a world that we can imagine ourselves falling into, the loneliness and solitude tearing away at our psyche bit by tiny bit.

It is the solitude and living on the fringe of society that gives Sue Ann her reason to exact revenge, the punishment for all those that took advantage of sexual naivety and the overt racism placed in front of her as one of a few people of colour in the American town, that ultimately destroys her mind. With Octavia Spencer, Juliette Lewis and Luke Evans giving powerful performances as the adults to whom the present hangs upon and with the not quite subtle ways in which the teenagers are treated by MA, including a rather brutal examination of white-washing in the community, delivered to the exceptional Dante Brown’s character of Darrell.

Nightmares don’t have to come in the form of dreams gone astray, they just have to reflect a moment in society in which embarrassment steps over the boundary of vengeance. MA is a perfect example of how to deliver such retribution and lose a part of yourself at the same time.

Ian D. Hall