Black horror

Black horror, horror subgenre that focuses on the experiences of Black Americans. Films in the Black horror genre feature stories involving Black characters and are usually made by Black writers and directors. Although Black horror is mainly a film genre, it also includes works of literature and visual art. The genre addresses racism—including systemic racism—and misogynoir, or the specific misogyny faced by Black women. It features social and political commentary about the horrors that Black Americans have experienced, including slavery, Jim Crow laws, lynching, sundown towns (towns that excluded nonwhite people after sunset), police violence, marginalization, and the psychological trauma of living in places where one is perceived as a threat simply because of the color of one’s skin.

Many older films in the horror genre reinforce negative stereotypes of Black people, use Black characters as plot fodder—exemplified in the “Black guy dies first” trope—or include Black characters who are literal monsters. Films, literature, and art in the Black horror genre contest these stereotypes and negative depictions, and they portray Black people resisting, fighting back, and surviving.

History of Black horror

An early example of a Black horror film is Son of Ingagi (1940), a monster movie with an all-Black cast in which a newlywed couple is menaced by a creature called N’Gina. The film was written by Spencer Williams, Jr., a Black actor, director, producer, and screenwriter. Williams also wrote, directed, and costarred in another early Black horror film, The Blood of Jesus (1941). In this film, a newlywed woman is accidentally shot by her husband; after dying of her injury, she must resist the influence of the devil. In 1991 The Blood of Jesus was inducted into the National Film Registry, a list of movies selected for preservation by the U.S. Library of Congress.

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Night of the Living Dead (1968), the first of the zombie movies written and directed by George A. Romero, addresses racial discrimination. Actor Duane Jones stars as Ben, the Black main character of the film, who is the calm, smart, and brave leader of a group of people trapped in a farmhouse by a zombie horde. At the end of the film, white vigilantes who are hunting zombies shoot and kill Ben without checking first to see if he actually is a zombie. They burn his body along with those of the zombies, in a scene suggestive of a lynching. In 1999 Night of the Living Dead was inducted into the National Film Registry. It is also included in the American Film Institute’s list of the 100 most thrilling American films.

Several of the blaxploitation films produced in the 1970s are also part of the Black horror genre. In Blacula (1972), directed by William Crain, Dracula turns an 18th-century African prince, who asks for his help in ending the slave trade, into a vampire. Other Blaxploitation horror movies of this era include Scream Blacula Scream (1973), Blackenstein (1973), Sugar Hill (1974), and Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde (1976).

Although the 1980s and later decades had their share of Black horror films, the genre gained nationwide attention with the 2017 release of the critically acclaimed and commercially successful movie Get Out. The film, written and directed by Jordan Peele—the founder of the film and television studio Monkeypaw Productions—tells the story of a Black photographer, Chris (Daniel Kaluuya), who travels with his white girlfriend, Rose (played by Allison Williams), to her home to meet her parents for the first time. There Chris uncovers a sinister plot. In 2018 Get Out won the Academy Award for best original screenplay. The American Film Institute included Get Out in its 2017 list of top movies of the year.

Since Get Out, the popularity of Black horror films and television programs has increased. Among the subgenre’s most successful movies in more recent years are Us (2019) and Nope (2022), both written, directed, and coproduced by Peele. Although many film critics regard the early 2020s as a golden age of Black horror, others have faulted some projects from this period, such as the film Antebellum (2020) and the television shows Lovecraft Country and Them, for their seemingly gratuitous depictions of extreme Black trauma.

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Notable Black horror films

• Ganja & Hess (1973) is a surreal, atmospheric vampire film that deals with themes of addiction and spirituality. After his assistant stabs him with an ancient dagger, anthropologist Dr. Hess Green (played by Jones) develops a craving for blood. Ganja & Hess was well received at the 1973 Cannes film festival. A 2014 remake of the film, titled Da Sweet Blood of Jesus, was directed by Spike Lee.

• Candyman (1992), set in the Cabrini-Green public housing project in Chicago, stars Tony Todd in the iconic title role. The film follows a graduate student (played by Virginia Madsen) investigating what she thinks is an urban legend about a hook-handed man; as she learns, Candyman really does appear before, and slaughter, anyone who says his name five times while looking into a mirror. The film addresses economic and housing inequality and lynching, among other issues.

• Tales from the Hood (1995) is an anthology of four tales that a funeral-home director tells to three drug dealers about police brutality, domestic abuse, racist politicians, and gang violence.

• Us (2019), written and directed by Peele, tells the story of a woman (played by Lupita Nyong’o) who fights to protect her husband and two children from dangerous doppelgangers.

• Antebellum (2020) features a lengthy and horrific opening segment in which a group of enslaved Black people in the South during the American Civil War are beaten, tortured, sexually abused, and killed by Confederate soldiers. The movie pointedly compares the monstrous hatred and violence of white Confederates with the racist attitudes and behavior of the contemporary alt-right.

• Bad Hair (2020), a comedy-horror film set in 1989, follows an ambitious woman (played by Elle Lorraine) who is told she doesn’t have the right look for a career in music television. After she gets a weave in order to have “good” hair, she finds out that the hair is bloodthirsty. The film addresses how Black Americans are discriminated against for wearing natural hairstyles.

• Lovecraft Country (2020) is a television series that melds ideas from the works of American horror author H.P. Lovecraft with the horrors of racism in the United States in the 1950s.

• Them (2021– ) is a television anthology series. The show’s first season, set in Los Angeles in 1953, follows a Black family that moves into an all-white neighborhood and is menaced by neighbors and supernatural forces. The show’s second season set in Los Angeles in 1991, follows a homicide detective investigating the brutal murder of a mother in a foster home.

• Horror Noire (2021) is an anthology of six short horror films by Black screenwriters and directors.

• Candyman (2021), a sequel to the original film, is directed by Nia DaCosta. The film tells the story of a young artist (played by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) who lives in a gentrified neighborhood where Cabrini-Green once stood and who finds himself drawn to the story of Candyman.

• Nope (2022), written and directed by Peele, tells the story of a brother (played by Kaluuya) and sister (played by Keke Palmer) who train horses for use in Hollywood productions. They discover that an unknown force is killing local residents and livestock alike.

• The Blackening (2022) is a comedy-horror film with the tagline “We Can’t All Die First.” In this film, a group of friends have a weekend reunion at a cabin in the woods, but a killer interrupts their plans.

• The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster (2023) was inspired by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Gothic horror novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818). After her brother is killed in an episode of street violence, a scientifically gifted teenager brings him back to life, only to discover that reanimation has made her brother a monster.