“It’s not that Mama doesn’t like this house — this house doesn’t like Mama.”
Horror films are capable of emphasizing grim realities through a boundless genre leaving you more afraid of what’s happening around you than what you’ve seen on screen. Jenna Cato Bass’ Good Madam rips open the generational trauma associated with domestic work in South Africa and how the effects are inherited to linger throughout the generations.
Tsidi is a single mother mourning the loss of her grandmother, who raised her. After a heated argument with her relatives regarding her grandmother’s home, Tsidi leaves her home in Gugulethu with her 9-year-old daughter, Winnie, to live with her estranged mother Mavis. Mavis works as a live-in domestic and has been for the past 30 years. In fact, the root of Tsidi and Mavis’ fractured relationship stems from Mavis never being fully available to Tsidi or her brother but fervently attentive to “Madam” and her white family.
On the arrival, you can see that Tsidi is uncomfortable with the memories this home holds. It doesn’t help that Mavis continues to wait on Madam hand and foot. She even insists that Tsidi and Winnie share the maid’s room, despite the rest of the house being empty. One day, Tsidi journeys upstairs to peek at Madam and discovers she’s catatonic, permanently bedridden. This discovery causes her to inquire why Mavis would choose to remain in maid quarters, and force them to stay in one cramped room with all of this open space. After Tsidi decides to make herself and Winnie more at home, sinister events begin to occur.
After the initial opening of the film, the Shudder original goes from a creep to a crawl that barely leaves any breadcrumbs to lead us to the next piece of the story. In fact, at one point it feels like there’s no story to be revealed and a feeling of irresolution begins to settle in. It’s not enough to stop watching, but it leaves you feeling as if you’re eavesdropping on a situation and aren’t clear as to what exactly is going on. Almost as if the story is hesitant to reveal itself to us too soon in fear of not having enough to hold us until the end.
Good Madam, directed by Jenna Cato Bass and co-written and produced by Babalwa Baartman, does well to illustrate the toxic relationship between domestic workers and their employers. Mavis’ obsession with caring for Madam is maddening. She almost anticipates Madam’s bell call before it’s even been rung. We see Mavis completely consumed by her position to care for Madam to the point where she can’t discern the menacing occurrences around her, including the change happening with her own child, Tsidi.
Bass and Babalwa create a complex character in Tsidi. She recognizes how unnatural the relationship between Mavis and Madam is and yet, finds herself being sucked into her mother’s shoes to perpetuate the cycle.
The sounds of scrubbing floors, the sound of a chair wobbling because someone is standing on it to dust, and the constant bell signaling for Mavis to come to the room could be triggering for viewers of South African descent. Bass’ use of photographs and statues makes for good old fashion spookiness.
At times, the supernatural occurrences are a bit too far and in between to keep the audience in a constant stasis of eerie wonder. Small pieces of the puzzle aren’t exactly unveiled as much as they are dropped onto the story in splotches. At the halfway point, the film smokes but isn’t quite lit. However, the last 30 minutes of the film blaze by as the picture becomes less blurred. By the end, it becomes clear that this isn’t a horror that’s meant to be seen, but to be felt. This revelation will make you want to rewatch the film to peel back new layers that may still be buried beneath.
Despite it being a South African horror, the underlying sentiment of escaping cycles of generational servitude to white people translates across audiences of color. Good Madam isn’t just a spooky film to be watched while chomping on handfuls of popcorn, but a catalyst for discussion on the effects apartheid continues to have on generations.
Good Madam premieres on Shudder July 14.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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