An ambitious concept and a game cast help the micro-budget Indie Red Pill capture our interest for a good while before it loses steam just when it should be reaching a horrific climax. Still, credit goes to African-American writer, producer, and actress Tonya Pinkins for getting a socio-political thriller made at all. Her goal of bringing a Black perspective to a film in these fraught times is a win.
Just ahead of the 2020 elections, a group of 6 progressives head into the red part of Virginia to get out the vote. They’re accommodations? A country house in an area that definitely does NOT welcome them. You can tell by the big ass sign that says “No Jews” and “No N——“
In the car are a Latino (Rubén Blades, surely the biggest name in the cast), a Jewish guy, an Eastern European, an African national and Cassandra (Pinkins) who didn’t need that big ass sign to know that these parts are hostile to people who look like her. Why does she see and feel things that the others don’t notice? Simple: it’s the white privilege form of blindness.
Even the poster of Melania in their makeshift Airbnb doesn’t seem direct enough for most of the squad to figure out that something is amiss. But when the guy from an African country goes missing and when a noose in the barn sways to and fro, we slowly, too slowly, start to edge toward the horror part of the story.
Alas, the scares aren’t scary and the third act plays out like some kind of Handmaids with archery skills finale. It turns out to be more silly than frightening, from a visual aspect. Pinkins otherwise has her finger on the pulse of a horrifying previous 4 years.
As a director, she has spoken of the “weaponization of whiteness” and while that phenomenon is, indeed, a very real form of terror, her realization of the concept onscreen doesn’t quite get there.
RED PILL is On Digital December 3 from Midnight Releasing
