Mlungu Wam

Directed by Jenna Cato Bass, Mlungu Wam follows Chumisa Cosa’s Tsidi as she and her daughter reluctantly move into the house where her estranged mother (Nosipho Mtebe’s Mavis) works for a wealthy white woman (Jennifer Boraine’s Diane). Filmmaker Bass has infused Mlungu Wam with an exceedingly rough-around-the-edges feel that’s reflected in its myriad of underwhelming attributes (but especially in the low-rent visuals and amateurish performances), and yet the movie initially does, armed with admittedly intriguing subject matter, possess a fair degree of promise that goes a long way towards compensating for its various deficiencies. There eventually (and perhaps inevitably) reaches a point, however, wherein the excessively deliberate pace and meandering narrative become far too problematic to comfortably ignore, with the progressively tedious atmosphere eventually highlighting the aggressively familiar and hackneyed bent of the hopelessly well-worn material. (And it doesn’t help, certainly, that the picture’s horror-specific elements are unable to even remotely pack the startling, unnerving punch that Bass has obviously intended.) The wildly over-the-top and completely ineffective third act ultimately ensures Mlungu Wam concludes on as anticlimactic and forgettable a note as one could possibly envision, with the end result an often aggressively misguided and misbegotten piece of work that fails on just about every level it attempts. (The social commentary is especially ham-fisted and laughably didactic, too.)

1/2* out of ****