ComingSoon spoke with The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster director Bomani J. Story and leading actress Laya DeLeon Hayes about adapting Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus in modern society and the universal themes that still resonate with today’s audience. Both artists delved into their experiences for this project and opened up about personal topics, including racism.
The movie is currently playing in theaters and is available digitally and through video-on-demand platforms now. It will also be available for streaming on ALLBLK and Shudder at a later date.
“Vicaria is a brilliant teenager who believes death is a disease that can be cured. After the brutal and sudden murder of her brother, she embarks on a dangerous journey to bring him back to life. Inspired by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster thematically challenges our ideas of life and death. Bomani J. Story, the film’s writer and director, crafts a thrilling tale about a family that, despite the terrors of systemic pressure, will survive and be reborn again.”
Bomani, it’s your feature debut, but it’s very confidently shot. You’re not shying away from anything here. Can you speak to the mindset you went into this with?
Bomani Story: As far as the visual language is concerned, there’s a lot of filmmakers that I love and look up to, Aronofsky being one of ’em. The ‘death is a disease’ line is a pretty specific homage to him and one of my favorite movies from him, The Fountain. He’s a very courageous filmmaker who makes you look at stuff, right? He’s not afraid of that. I love that. Then, just like obvious horror movies that are just very brave. The big ones for me with this one were Black Christmas, the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Halloween. These are just like visually confident movies that I was watching and looking at and breaking down, and that gave me the language to put this together or the way that I envisioned it, whatever you wanna call it. That was kind of my way kind of looking at it and capturing the humanity of the situation. I think just trying to capture the rawness as much as I can.
What other movie by Aronofsky do you like in particular?
Story: I like them all. The Fountain is probably my favorite of his. Obviously, Requiem for a Dream and Pi, those are great. I can do a whole dissertation on why all his movies are great and, if you say otherwise, you s—. [Laughs]
No, no, no, I totally agree with you. Are you happy that Pi is going back into theaters?
Story: Oh, hell yeah. I’m gonna see that in IMAX, I gotta do that. I wasn’t talking about you, I was just saying in general, man, not you bro. [Laughs]. Yeah, when Pi comes back in theaters, I’m seeing that. I remember the first time I watched that, I was like, ‘What the f— is going on?’ I was like, ‘Amazing!’ I was actually listening to that score by writing this script ’cause the theme of that score and then him and his little numbers lab, it was an influence on this. His movies are constantly in circulation for me.
Yeah, I can see that and I can see what you mean. By the way, I totally agree with your take on someone who hates Aronofsky’s movies. Let’s leave it like that.
Story: Yeah! [Laughs]
Laya, some of the research your character does is so nasty. How was it interacting with corpses and filming those scenes?
Story: Yes, Laya, tell us.
Laya DeLeon Hayes: Oh gosh, it was gross. It was very nasty! I think I had to have like a mental talk with myself, especially before those days of filming where she’s working on her brother Chris. Also, our wonderful visual effects person, Christina, had made Bomani’s head as one of the corpses too, so it was crazy. I was looking at Bomani who was directing me, and then also at the same time at his head on a platter. It was very crazy for me. I honestly was just very excited to dig into horror. I wasn’t a huge fan of horror before doing this movie. I just wanted to do a horror movie as an actor and as an artist, and I thought it would be a very big challenge for me. That day was probably one of the most challenging. I really had to like get myself mentally prepared for it.
Story: Yeah, I had my cameo with my head, you know?
Have you changed your mind about horror movies after shooting this one?
Hayes: A little bit. I’m still a bit of a scaredy-cat. I have to be honest. Every time I watch something a bit scary, I have to follow it up with a cartoon or with a Disney movie. I will say I’m still a scaredy-cat, but I would love to do as many horror movies as I possibly can. I will say filming it is one of the most fun experiences, one of the most fulfilling experiences I’ve probably ever had. Hopefully, more horror movies soon, or a sequel to Angry Black Girl.
Fingers crossed for that one. What was it about the universal themes of Frankenstein that made you want to update it to a modern story?
Story: When I read the novel way back in the day when I first got to high school, it gave me anxiety and I realized how potent those themes were for today. Some of those things in the book, they just fit, you don’t even have to change anything. It just really resonated with me, especially with a lot of current issues that are happening. It just really spoke to me. Particularly, death is a disease. If a girl was looking at these things like these, I feel like this is where her mind would go, if she’s dealing with these problems.
It just made sense and it felt right and it felt appropriate to completely lean in with those contemporary themes for it. To me, it’s like Frankenstein takes huge swings at a lot of social commentary, the book itself. There’s even a moment in the book where the monster talks about the eradication of the indigenous people of the Americas. He’s commenting on that already in the Romantic era of novels that was like 220 years ago or whatever. It was crazy. It just makes complete sense, you know? It’s like it just fits. I dunno if that answers your question, but I hope it does.
Yeah, you answered pretty well. Laya, what did you find most intriguing about V as a character?
Hayes: So much. Like I said, just that fascination with death. I think as a black person in America, there’s just a very fine line between life and death as you move throughout the world. That inner horror is constantly in your head that you have to live with every single day. It was the fact that I was seeing this character that was in a sort of community or predicament that I was aware of and that I felt like I had often seen on screen, but that Vicaria kind of marched to the beat of her own drum, that she was original in the types of moves that she wanted to make. She was constantly thinking of other ways to basically say, like we do in the movie, ‘F— the system,’ you know? I think that was the most interesting part of it, just the fact that she was so fascinated by death and you can’t be fascinated with death if you’re not fascinated with life. That’s something that I’m obviously fascinated about. It was the idea to play a character that I have not played before and someone who was layered and very compelling to me. I just wanted to be able to do my take on it and hopefully give justice to Frankenstein as well.
Bomani, something that you said caught my attention. Your movie is also a great look at a lot of the system issues in general. Can you speak towards showing these issues within a genre movie and how they’re impacting all the characters?
Story: Some of the marks of a good story are always character, plot, story, and themes. It’s like, are you able to try it? I’m always trying to achieve landing all those things within a story. And the personal touch. You can’t copy someone’s personal touch ’cause it’s like their fingerprint. My personal touch obviously, coming from the culture, it’s like that’s what I wanted to address. Let’s capture the humanity of the situation ’cause I feel like there’s a lot of dehumanization of us. We’re not shown in all these different angles and, on top of that, we’re not given the breath to kind of explore these genre films either.
The importance of speaking on those things, that is the culture. At the end of the day, when we’re at our own dinner tables, we do discuss these things within our own homes. It’s not like I’m trying to shove something down your throat. This is how it goes down. I talk to my mom and my sisters and my dad, we discuss these things and we move on talk about other things and laugh. It was really important for this movie to show us in a very human light and show what’s affecting us in the spotlight. Nothing stays truer to Frankenstein than that ’cause the whole story is basically about that, whether you look at the novel from 200 years ago and then this inspired story by that novel, you know? I wanted to capture that essence as much as I could.
Leia you already addressed this topic, but I would like to hear a little bit more. We see this sort of racism your character faces early on. Can you speak to the type of challenges Vicaria faces in trying to pursue her education and her studies?
Hayes: You really see it in that scene, especially with the school that Vicaria goes to, trying to find her way throughout her community. There’s this thing when you’re a black person, you learn to code switch. That’s something I think Aria doesn’t do, which I really admired about her. She is constantly herself or feels like herself no matter what community or person comes into her life. It’s just a part of the black experience. I mean, ever since I was very young — and even that scene with the teacher at the school –, I can remember being in elementary school and having my dad come to the school and having to like set the record straight for these teachers who didn’t understand what it was like to be a young black girl in the middle of a class of people who do not look like me.
The fact that Bomani gets to show it, taking a very classic tale and putting a very modern twist on it, is a way that it shows our humanity and the honesty of what it truly is. Vicaria has to kind of deal again with that code-switching when she’s at school, but also having this kind of tough exterior as she’s in her community as a way of survival as well. I think it was important for me to also show her vulnerability just as a teenage girl trying to put the pieces together. There’s so much that you’re stripped away from, whether that’s yourself or your livelihood or your family when you’re put into communities like that. It was important for me to show her vulnerability and her humanity at the end of the day.
Bomani, would you like to add anything to this answer?
Story: I couldn’t say it better myself. That was one of the strongest scenes I felt like I captured while we were there when I was looking on it because another tidbit about that was something that my sister went through when she was in either middle school or high school, I can’t remember. The story’s pretty legendary at our dinner tables now with my sister, where this teacher wouldn’t say her name right. That was my sister’s quit. That’s what she said back after getting fed up with constantly not humanizing her, or dehumanizing her, by not getting her name right. It was important to capture not only just like big systemic pressures that are so flashy in the news these days but even just the subtle microaggressions that we deal with on a regular basis.
