Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Ghosts Of Sugar Land’ On Netflix, A Documentary Short About How A Young Muslim Became Radicalized

Imagine having a friend who ended up fighting against your country in some sort of battle or war. It would be very disconcerting, right? What would motivate this person to cross over to the enemy? The documentary short Ghosts Of Sugar Land does just that, via interviews with friends of the person who crossed over. Read on for more…

GHOSTS OF SUGAR LAND: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Ghosts of Sugar Land is a documentary short directed by Bassam Tariq, examines the radicalization of a young American Muslim through interviews with his friends. The young man, who is given the pseudonym “Mark,” converted to Islam shortly before college, and became radicalized shortly thereafter. A number of years ago, through Facebook posts, he crossed over from Turkey to what he called the “Islamic State.” What Tariq does is speak tp his friends about how they think he became radicalized and whether he’s in ISIS or not.

Not all of his friends, all of whom are obscured behind plastic Halloween masks to protect their identities, think he’s joined ISIS. Some think he may be an FBI informant. But that may be denial on their part. Through these interviews and old photos (where the friends’ faces are obscured by their respective masks), Tariq traces what may have happened to Mark to get him to the point where he joined ISIS.

For one, he was the only Black person in his high school, and he felt like he didn’t fit in anywhere. The people he felt most comfortable with was the Muslim teens in the school, but he wasn’t completely in the group, because he didn’t know their references and in-jokes. But he became interested in Islam and decided to convert. But as college went on, his friends were noticing that what Mark was saying in person and on social media became harsher and more anti-American, and he even railed against the secular traits of his fellow American Muslims back home.

The friends try to speculate why Mark felt the way he did, and some of his friends even support some of his views, even if they don’t support the language he used.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: We can’t think of any, mainly because this film is so short (21 minutes) and mainly consists of interviews.

Performance Worth Watching: We appreciated Tariq’s Photoshop skills, as he did a nice job of matching the view of a mask in a photo depending on the angle of the face of the person in the photo. He also somehow blurs faces of others in photos in a creative way.

Memorable Dialogue: In a group discussion, a dude in an Optimus Prime mask more or less agreed with Mark’s view that the Muslims in suburbs like Sugar Land are leading cushy lives while fellow Muslims in countries like Syria are getting killed and bombed out of their homes. “Someone needs to step up and do something, because the world is just watching these people get pummeled into the ground.” The same guy said that Muslims have it far harder in this country than Black people do.

Our Take: When you’re making a documentary short, you have to pick your story elements carefully. The challenge Bassam Tariq took on was to explain Mark’s story in 21 minutes, via thirdhand information, and with very little biographical information. We don’t know if he completely pulled it off.

If Ghosts Of Sugar Land is about the conflict that American Muslim men have living in a country where many people mistrust Muslims, and how their religion and their “cushy” lives in suburban America are in conflict, then it’s a fine, if shallow, examination. But if the film was about Mark (who is identified as Warren Christopher Clark in an epilogue) and how he became radicalized, then the film failed in its mission. Tariq just didn’t give us enough information about Mark to fill in the picture of why he could go from uncomfortable teen to ISIS recruit within the span of a few years.

Also, we’re not 100 percent behind Tariq using Halloween masks to obscure the faces of he people he interviewed. Yes, it’s a cheap and effective way of hiding identities, and it’s an attention-grabber. But it’s also a gimmick that inadvertently takes attention away from the movie’s message. He may not have intended it to be funny, but it is, at least a little, especially when he takes pains to match the masks to what he uses to obscure a particular person’s face in an old photo. So now you’re looking for, say, the guy in the Kylo Ren mask instead of listening to what he or whoever is talking is saying, and we’re pretty sure that wasn’t his intention.

Finally, some perspective from his family, a girlfriend or other female friend, or someone other than his bro-ish buddies would have been useful. Then again, he only had 21 minutes. Perhaps an expanded version of this film will include those people, especially when you see the information in the epilogue.

Our Call: STREAM IT. While the gimmickry in Ghosts Of Sugar Land is distracting, and it isn’t quite sure of what it wants to discuss, it’s a good view of what it’s like to be a young Muslim man in post-9/11 America.

Your Call:

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, FastCompany.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.

Stream Ghosts Of Sugar Land On Netflix