Jagged Mind (2023)

Released in 2023 on Hulu, Jagged Mind comes from writer Allyson Morgan and producer 20th Digital Studio as part of their horror-thriller slate. On the surface, it’s a slick psychological thriller about a woman caught in time loops, love, and unraveling sanity. On a deeper level, though, the film brushes up against old wounds in how Black women’s minds and bodies are depicted on screen.

Here’s the thing: I’ve seen this storyline play out too many times. The whole “inherited mental condition” angle? Played out. The “is she losing her mind or is something deeper happening?” trope? We know it. And when the lead’s love interest ends up being an older white woman, it felt like another missed opportunity to show Black queer love that doesn’t center whiteness.

But what really rubbed me wrong is how often Hollywood slides back into the “Black women are crazy” narrative. It’s tired. We deserve stories where our pain isn’t pathologized, where our cycles aren’t reduced to madness, and where our healing isn’t dependent on proximity to whiteness. Watching Jagged Mind, I couldn’t help but think of how these loops reflect the collective trauma Black women carry — reliving harm, gaslighting, and distorted realities handed down like an unwanted inheritance.

Spiritually, the film had the bones to be something powerful: time loops as karmic cycles, ancestral wounds repeating until they’re healed, the choice to step out of toxic love as a form of liberation. But instead of deepening that medicine, the story leaned too hard on clichés that keep us stuck in survival instead of celebrating our rebirth.

Bottom line: if you’re into thrillers and don’t mind the repetition of a familiar plot, Jagged Mind is a decent watch. But if you’re craving something fresh — a film that affirms Black women’s sanity, love, and spiritual evolution — this ain’t it.

✨ Sometimes the scariest thing isn’t the monster in the room, it’s the pattern we keep replaying because Hollywood can’t imagine us outside of trauma. May we demand stories that honor our wholeness, not just our wounds.