{"id":733817,"date":"2021-09-09T11:36:10","date_gmt":"2021-09-09T15:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=733817"},"modified":"2021-09-09T11:36:14","modified_gmt":"2021-09-09T15:36:14","slug":"review-karen-is-the-blm-movie-nobody-asked-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/review-karen-is-the-blm-movie-nobody-asked-for\/","title":{"rendered":"REVIEW: \u2018Karen\u2019 Is the BLM Movie Nobody Asked For"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">18<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Freview-karen-is-the-blm-movie-nobody-asked-for%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=733817&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/GettyImages-633044532-scaled-1.jpg?w=1200&amp;h=800&amp;ixlib=react-9.0.3\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" \/><\/div>\n<p><span>Darth Vader. Norman Bates. Hans Gruber. Karen Drexler\u2026 but you can just call her Karen.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Yes, the scourge of social media memes now has a feature film all her own, one that doubles as a Black Lives Matter recruitment film.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cKaren\u201d is a B-movie thriller at its core, one that doesn\u2019t have an ounce of fat on its progressive bone. It\u2019s lean and mean when it\u2019s not bordering on camp. The latter falls to \u201cOrange Is the New Black\u201d co-star Taryn Manning, hamming it up as the title villain.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>By the time Manning\u2019s face twitches with racist rage you know she\u2019s gunning for a Razzie, not an Oscar.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Imani (Jasmine Burke) and Malik (Corey Hardrict of \u201cThe Chi\u201d fame)&nbsp;just moved into an affluent Georgia suburb, their dreams of starting a family coming into sharp focus.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>They\u2019re smart, attractive and deeply in love, and their future is bright enough to require shades.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Then they meet their new white neighbor, Karen Drexler (Manning). She\u2019s prim, proper and impossibly nosy, the very worst kind of neighbor to have. And that\u2019s before she starts referring to \u201cyour people\u201d and other wildly offensive terms.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Karen hectors the new couple about HOA rules in between having black diners thrown out of restaurants for laughing too loudly. Oh, and she has a Confederate-themed soap dispenser in her house to match the old time photos of Civil War generals on the walls.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>At one point she demands to speak to the manager. Of course.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>She\u2019s so Karen it hurts, and \u201cKaren\u201d leans hard into that sentiment. It doesn\u2019t help that Manning looks and sounds like Rachel Dratch of \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d fame, adding to the film\u2019s campy veneer.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>A smarter film might have let Karen grow into her villainy, letting her bigotry simmer until it boiled over in brutal fashion.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Nope.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>She\u2019s a monster from start to finish, which makes the events that follow hopelessly predictable.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Of course Karen has a racist brother who works in law enforcement, a plot device that essentially powers the film\u2019s third act.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Add viral videos, a clumsy discussion on slavery\u2019s fallout and a violent finale with very little tension and you have mediocrity gunning for social justice.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The film is set in Atlanta, a predominantly black city where almost every cop in town is white, apparently. It\u2019s hardly the only detour from the real world, another reason the thrills rarely stick.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Burke and Hardrict, both solid, hit their marks as if appearing in a different film entirely. Their bond is sweet and real, and the arguments that grow from their attempts at parenthood prove sound.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>They\u2019re just at odds with the potboiler in play.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cKaren\u201d is never dull, and while that feels like faint praise it isn\u2019t in our woke age. Socially aware films can be dreadful to endure, like the 2020 dud \u201cAntebellum,\u201d an alleged horror film that doubled as a lecture on slavery\u2019s repercussions. \u201cKaren\u201d knows what it is and delivers exactly what viewers expect given its crudely realized <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=1BK50TD5BdU\">trailer<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>It\u2019s also detached from reality, especially in the wake of the George Floyd riots. Any hint of racism in public behavior is no longer tolerated. Just ask disgraced country crooner Morgan Wallen, whose career got derailed when he used the \u201cn-word\u201d in private but without malice.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>So watching Karen, her racist cop brother and their goon squad behaving as if it\u2019s still the worst of 1950s America lessens the film\u2019s fear factor.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The film opens with a \u201cBlack Lives Matter\u201d chalk message being scrubbed off the pavement, but the events play out like they occurred years before BLM\u2019s ascendancy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>And yet \u201cKaren\u201d perfectly captures the progressive paranoia about race relations in 2021 better than most films could. In the \u201cKaren\u201d film universe secret societies exist to punish black Americans while protecting those who rob them of their rights. Police are to be feared at all costs, and the few honest cops are powerless to stop their crooked peers.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The screenplay, from writer\/director Coke Daniels, hints at a culture with little tolerance for modern-day Karens, but it also says there\u2019s no escape from them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Daniels attempts to explain away some of Karen\u2019s bigotry, but the piecemeal back story doesn\u2019t help. What\u2019s potentially fun is how some of the secondary players take notice of Karen being, well, a prototypical Karen.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cBut what\u2019s her real name?\u201d Malik\u2019s friend asks at one point, one of several snicker-worthy lines. That kind of meta commentary could have elevated the film to camp status. Too bad the film\u2019s serious messaging won\u2019t allow it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Another intriguing element brought up and discarded? Karen finds Malik attractive, seeing him as a sexual object but not someone worthy of his humanity.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>A few sequences are as amateurish as the worst student film. Consider a throwaway sequence where Karen\u2019s pre-teen daughter, who has a black boyfriend (of course!), helps Imani pick up the trash Momma knocked over before Karen scolds her for helping a (black) neighbor.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The Rev. Al Sharpton might decry the film\u2019s lack of subtlety.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cKaren\u201d wraps with a short but overt lecture about race relations in America today, a wildly unnecessary touch given what we\u2019ve just witnessed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>If you missed the movie\u2019s neon light messaging by then you\u2019ll never get it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><i>The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author\u2019s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.<\/i><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><i>The Daily Wire is one of America\u2019s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a&nbsp;<\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/subscribe\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>member<\/i><\/span><\/a><i>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Darth Vader. Norman Bates. Hans Gruber. Karen Drexler\u2026 but you can just call her Karen.Yes, the scourge of social media memes now has a feature film all her own, one &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-733817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=733817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=733817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=733817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=733817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}