{"id":12921,"date":"2018-09-22T15:36:14","date_gmt":"2018-09-22T19:36:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lawrencecconnolly.com\/archive\/?p=12921"},"modified":"2023-07-07T22:43:29","modified_gmt":"2023-07-08T02:43:29","slug":"tales-from-the-hood-2horror-history-humor-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lawrencecconnolly.com\/archive\/2018\/09\/22\/tales-from-the-hood-2horror-history-humor-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"Tales from the Hood 2<\/i>
Horror, History, Humor & Politics<\/br>"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"\u201cAll of that<\/span><\/em> art-for-art\u2019s-sake stuf<\/span>f is BS. What are these people talking about? Are you really telling me that Shakespeare and Aeschylus weren\u2019t writing about kings? All good art is political!\u201d \u2013 <\/em>Toni Morrison<\/span><\/p>\n

Morrison\u2019s words are particularly relevant to the horror genre. After all, horror literature is all about powers beyond comprehension. It\u2019s true in the genre\u2019s seminal works (think Dante\u2019s Inferno<\/em>), and it\u2019s certainly true with horror stories today.<\/p>\n

Case in point is Tales from the Hood 2<\/em><\/a>, the new anthology film from Rusty Cundieff and Darrin Scott, which serves up a mix of timely jokes, jolts, and meditations on contemporary politics.<\/p>\n

I caught the film at the Fantasia International Film Festival<\/a>, where it screened along with the world premiere of Nightmare Cinema<\/em><\/a>. Here\u2019s what I had to say about it in a brief blog post<\/a> the following day:<\/p>\n

Tales from the Hood 2, from filmmakers Rusty Cundieff and Darrin Scott, is a topical mix of dark comedy and thought-provoking horror. I can\u2019t recommend it enough, but I will try my damnedest in tomorrow\u2019s post.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Although I may have tried my damnedest, that post didn\u2019t appear the next day. But now \u2013 with Hood 2<\/em> scheduled for release in two weeks \u2013 I’m at last making good on my promise.<\/p>\n

\"\"Coming more than 20 years after the original Tales\u00a0from the Hood<\/em><\/a>, the sequel opens with a wrap-around segment titled “Robo Hell,” in which Keith David plays\u00a0Portifoy Simms, a 21st-century scop hired to help program Robo Patriot — a sentient robot that operates on a kind of next-generation AI software known as RI<\/em>\u00a0(Real Intelligence).\u00a0 As one of the developers tells Simms, RI enables Robo Patriot to “learn from second-hand experience — stories, fables, tales. And that’s where you come in.”<\/p>\n

\"\"The conceit: Simms will help the Robo Patriot develop a sense of justice by telling it stories, the first of which is titled “Good Golly.”<\/p>\n

“Good Golly” opens with two friends, Audrey (Alexandria DeBerry) and Zoe (Jasmine Akako), visiting the Museum of Negrosity in search of golliwogs, rag dolls fashioned as racists caricatures. Audrey had a golliwog as a\u00a0child. She thinks they’re cute, and though the\u00a0museum’s curator explains that the dolls were an attempt to perpetuate racial\u00a0stereotypes and are not for sale, she refuses to be turned away.<\/p>\n

Presented with equal doses of history, horror, and humor, “Good Golly” accelerates into what appears at times to recall the “Amelia” segment of Richard Matheson’s Trilogy of Terror<\/em><\/a>. But where Matheson went for thrills, “Good Golly” has another agenda — a lesson that doesn’t become clear to the golliwog shoppers until it’s too late.<\/p>\n

\"\"The next segment, “Medium,” centers on TV psychic John Lloyd (Bryan Batt from Mad Men<\/em>). Dealing with a band of gangsters who put their trust in Lloyd’s pseudo skills, this episode is perhaps the most straightforwardly entertaining of the four, offering a humorous riff on the blurred line between reality TV and the realities of life. It benefits from energetic performances and twists reminiscent of Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"Perhaps inspired by the Me-Too movement, “Date Night” centers on a pair of pick-up artists who pass themselves off as casting directors. Their plans go south when they meet Carmen and Liz — aspiring actresses who are not what they seem. It’s a story of predators becoming prey that plays like an allegory for our times.<\/p>\n

\"\"As Hood 2<\/em> draws to a close, storyteller Simms presents his grand finale, a poignant ghost story about a politician haunted by past civil-rights leaders and victims of racial injustice. Depicting such historical figures in film is challenging, yet Cundeiff and Scott pull this one off beautifully. In all, it’s a timely meditation on race in America.<\/p>\n

The final act returns us to the film’s\u00a0wrap-around device. Here, the RI robot has listened to the stories and is ready to apply what it has learned. As you might imagine, things do not go quite the way the robot’s designers had planned.<\/p>\n

\"\"Speaking with Rusty\u00a0Cundeiff and Darrin Scott following their Fantasia premier, I discovered we share a fondness for the old Twilight Zone<\/em> series and the way writers like Rod Serling and Richard Matheson used horror as an\u00a0allegory to comment on timely issues and social injustice.<\/p>\n

With Tales of the Hood 2<\/em>, the Cundeiff-Scott team is carrying that tradition into the 21st century.<\/p>\n

Tales from the Hood 2<\/em> comes out on home video on October 2.<\/p>\n