The Sympathy Card (2019)

In a world where we hear ringers and beepers at every corner, technology feels inescapable. This is why technology is often an enemy in Digital J-horrors, like One Missed Call.

The 2019 film, Vai, takes us through eight stories across the islands of Oceania. The settings are unbelievably beautiful, the cast is beautiful, the languages are beautiful, and the stories are beautiful…but heartbreaking.

I can say without question, that this is the first movie I’ve ever seen where art imitates life so much that I could 100% identify with it on a personal level. The predominately Black cast of characters are people with hopes, dreams, fears, and ambitions.

It’s 2021 and what few LGBTQ+ films that are produced by major film studios continue to star cisgender heterosexual actors, rather than actual LGBTQ+ people.

Two Distant Strangers (2020) centers around Carter James (Joey Bada$$) as he tries to get back home to his pitbull, Jeter, after spending a night at the apartment of his date Perri (Zaria Simone). What gets in the way of Carter reuniting with his dog is that every time he tries to leave Perri’s apartment,  he is killed by police and wakes up back in her bed in a never-ending cycle. It addresses the issue of police brutality which rightly has been in the public eye more and more with the unjust deaths caused at the hands of law enforcement.

True crime media is notoriously obsessed with the “missing white woman” trope, and yet the vast majority of American murder victims are male, and well over half are people of color.