You're Allowed to Have Mixed Feelings About This Film

Rating: 7/10 (13 July 2017)

As a horror fan I deeply appreciated the style, themes, musical score and comic relief, as well as the obvious tributes to certain 60s-80s classic horror cinema. Overall I was pleasantly surprised because I was frankly expecting something very predictable but then enjoyed the weird twists.
Politically, I also appreciated the handling of not only of racism but of the ludicrous reality of wealthy hypocritical "liberals" in isolated suburbs removed from the social groups they claim to care for. The old satire tune "Love Me, I'm a Liberal" comes to mind.
However despite my appreciation of the film I was a bit taken aback that every single white character is evil. Its fine to make a film with all white villains, that's fine with me... What unnerved me is that there are zero good or neutral white characters in the film, not even so much as a cameo of a co-worker or janitor. If that was supposed to be a sophisticated jab at pseudo-liberals demonizing all white people (after all the director is biracial and has a white wife after all) that I can live with. What I can't live with are the people who will see this film and only have their suspicion or paranoia about whites reinforced because they aren't complex thinkers. That's not helpful to race relations. At all.