Excuse me, I’m currently cosplaying as a crying white woman and am on the phone with the Hollywood police to file a complaint. Why? Welllllll...
On Monday, Black Twitter ran amok when the following movie trailer was posted on our respective timelines much to our collective demise:
It’s for a movie titled, Karen. And it stars that short-form social media content comedian dude who will inevitably become the new-age version of the Black talent (also known as a “Black-tor”) that you always recognize from many projects but can’t remember his name, Tia Mowry’s husband and Pensatucky from Orange Is the New Black. Here’s the IMDb page if you want to cite their actual names. Since we’re on the topic of IMDb, this film is helmed by Coke Daniels...what a name.
As for the plot, basically a Black family moves to a new neighborhood a la Lakeview Terrace and is terrorized by one of the (white) tricks pimp Terrence Howard delightfully advocated for whooping. There is only one appropriate answer to this mess, and it is inspired by the supremely talented Betty Gabriel. Yes, that oft-memed gif from Get Out.
Speaking of Get Out...Jordan Peele’s name is unfortunately attached to this mess. Oh, it’s not because he’s involved in any way, don’t fret! It’s because Black Twitter immediately had his name trending since—as The Glow Up’s Managing Editor Maiysha Kai aptly pointed out—”We’ve seen this movie before.” Father’s Day just passed and it looks like Jordan has yet another cinematic son.
Seriously, this looks like this was filmed tomorrow. You read that right.
In addition to lazily mimicking the popular director’s style and motif, you really didn’t have to be a Hollywood insider to see this coming. Of course someone (or possibly many someones) was going to make a movie or TV series about the concept of Karens. I’m halfway expecting a Karen Cinematic Universe (KCU) with the next franchise film being titled Becky. Don’t blame me if this happens by the way—no, I didn’t “give them any ideas!” Hollywood moves fast so we’re probably already too late to reject this hypothetical notion.
There’s no release date highlighted in the trailer (I’ll settle for either “never” or “February 37th”), but the end-credits do mention that it is a “BET Original Film” so I’m assuming we have our distributor culprit confirmed. I’m guessing this was their answer to our “No more Baby Boy reruns, please!” joke-cries?
So...who’s buying the snacks for the inevitable live-tweeting event on Black Twitter? I got five on it...