In “Master,” Regina Hall plays a professor at an elite New England college, and one of the few Black people on a campus where malevolent supernatural forces may or may not be at play.

Shadowy figures in long hooded cloaks appear in the distance. Dormitory hallways turn ominous. A young Black student’s nightmares fill with terrifying visions.

All that definitely creates a creepy vibe. Yet the scariest parts of writer-director Mariama Diallo’s film might be the stuff that’s all too real: the casual racism, classism, privilege and inequality that almost no one there seems to notice.

“In ‘Master,’ I think you get the horror of the film, and then the horror of the history of race in this fictitious world, that is incredibly familiar and real,” says Hall, one of three co-hosts of the Oscars this month. “You’re kind of having two things happen simultaneously

“So there’s a lot of symbolism that (Diallo’s) able to use with the haunting,” she says. “You know: What is really haunting?”

A small seed grows

Diallo says the earliest seed of her story came while she was a student at Yale; she got thinking about the university’s tradition of using the title “master” for faculty members who oversaw residence halls. It’s a tradition carried over from English schools, but one that today feels outdated and insensitive in its racial overtones.

Hall plays Gail, the newly named master of the residence hall where Jasmine, a young Black first-year student played by Zoe Renee, is assigned a room. Years earlier, the first Black student in the school’s history had hanged herself in that very room.

“After that initial spark, I really started thinking about the character of Gail,” says Diallo, who makes her feature film directing debut with “Master.” “I wanted to follow this Black woman who is entering a new position (as a master).

“She’s been elevated in certain respects, but then she discovers that she hasn’t been,” she says.

Diallo says she imagined the story on a snow-blanketed campus and decided to set the tale in Massachusetts.

“Part of it, I think, was maybe also this farce of self-delusion, of telling myself that it wasn’t actually about my experience, so I’ll just translate it from Connecticut to Massachusetts,” she says, laughing.

“That shifted location made me think about Salem and the witch trials and, you know, the madness,” Diallo says. “But also the frost and the isolation and the fear and paranoia.

“What it means to be in a cloistered society like that, and the way that truth and information gets contorted. It’s like light going into a black hole. It just changes once you get into that space.”

Subtexts to horror

Gail’s best friend Liv, played by Amber Gray, is up for tenure, and the three Black women of different ages and positions, find themselves drawn together in unexpected ways.

“When I read the script, I thought about it a lot after finished,” Hall says. “It had a lot of thought-provoking elements. I loved the idea of the horror genre set in the world of academia. There was a lot of social commentary in that script.”

Hall’s career includes dramas such as “The Hate U Give” and comedies including “Girls Trip” and “Think Like A Man.” She also starred in four installments of the horror parody franchise “Scary Movie.”

“I like horror movies, certainly, but I like all genres of film,” Hall says. “I think if you take issues of race – and ideas and concepts and realities that are difficult to discuss – and you put them a comedy, then it can make it more palatable for people to watch or discuss.

“I think now you can put those same ideas in the genre of horror, as well,” she says. “It makes it a little more digestible for the audience.”

Diallo says that she’s always found horror a lively, fun and earnest genre.

“There’s something about the visceral emotional space that it allows you to enter that’s just really powerful,” Diallo says. “As a horror director, you can really kind of approach your audience and say, ‘I’m trying to take you along on for the ride.’ “

Making a match

Regina Hall’s name surfaced early in discussions of who should play Gail, Diallo says.

“What always kept me returning to Regina is just the way that she can balance a lot of different tones,” she says, pointing to the 2018 movie “Support The Girls” as the role that convinced her to approach Hall. “I knew she had these risk-taking sensibilities.

“She’s worked in a lot of different spaces, and part of what I was trying to do in the film was move in a few different moods and tones,” Diallo says. “You know, the satire and the horror and the drama, and be able to move between them seamlessly.”

Of course, Diallo says she wasn’t at all sure an established actress like Hall would be open to working with a first-time feature director like her.

“I was just hoping and praying that we could convince her,” she says. “We sent the script. I wrote her a letter. I sweat over that letter, and wrote and rewrote it, and just tried to explain within one page why I thought she was the most necessary inclusion in the film.”

When Hall agreed to meet, Diallo flew to Los Angeles from her home in New York City.

“That was one of the points where it really struck me, like: This is happening,” Diallo says. “It’s almost surreal. I’m going from my ordinary life, and next thing I know I’m in L.A. sitting across from Regina having lunch, acting like it’s normal. Nothing about this is normal.

“It really kind of showed me what was possible,” she says.

From across the table that day, Hall was also taking the measure of Diallo, she says.

“Once I met Mariama and talked to her, and she told me films that she liked, that resonated with her, I was like, ‘Oh she’s a really interesting filmmaker,’” Hall says.

“I just thought, you know, this could be really good.”

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