Jenna Cato Bass’ Good Madam speaks to the horrors of South African apartheid as a psychological thriller: There’s nothing more frightening than worldly damage already done. The racial dynamic between “Madams” and their “servants” shapes the film’s Cape Town lifestyles into a complicated mess of thorny branches. Satirical commentary and haunted house architecture intersect, spoken in Xhosa for authenticity. Don’t expect extremely sinister imagery like Remi Weekes’ His House or ferocious zombie energies like C.J. “Fiery” Obasi’s Ojuju, but don’t fret either. Good Madam delivers unrest and paranoia without needing these overt horror mechanisms.
Central to Bass’ tale is Tsidi (Chumisa Cosa) and her daughter Winnie (Kamvalethu Jonas Raziya), who move in with Tsidi’s estranged mother, a caretaker for a sickly white woman. Tsidi escapes her more underprivileged area for Cape Town’s suburbs as she helps mama Mavis (Nosipho Mtebe) with daily upkeep duties. Mavis’ employer Diane (Jennifer Boraine) is catatonic, but Tsidi still feels her presence looming over the house, given commandments that Mavis enforces. Tsidi thinks Mavis’ emphatic servitude to Diane is strange, especially when Winnie starts speaking English and getting rides from white families—like something in the house is corrupting her child.
Good Madam stresses psychological horror as a slow burn that lingers on Tsidi’s and Mavis’ communication breakdowns. Bass taps horror tropes in lower doses that aren’t enthusiastically scare-forward, without early consistency or momentum. Tsidi’s discomfort comes from Mavis’ upholding of situationally silly guidelines, like never touching Diane’s things despite Diane’s inability to even escape from under her bedsheets. Mavis treats Diane like segregation still exists based on bitterly nostalgic fears, while Tsidi distrusts whiteness—unlike the coexisting Winnie. Good Madam represents the past, present and future as forever changed by apartheid—light on shivers, heavy on context.