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Originally published on PopMatters.com I have a secret passion; the less addicted of you might call it an addiction. I like to watch. I rent base, filthy movies and slip them into brown paper bags so no one can tell. I sit alone in seedy, near-empty theaters, pleasuring myself with this trash. I'm too embarrassed to tell anyone about my...

Cinema in 2023 boasted a slew of surprise hits and surprise flops, but one constant was the Black presence in horror. Not necessarily a year of earth-shattering accomplishments, 2023 was for Black horror more about consistency and variety, broadening the typical Black roles into period pieces, ghost stories, mad scientist tales, horror-comedies, and family-friendly fare. As with last year,...

It goes without saying that over the years, Hollywood has had some issues with adequate racial representation in starring roles, and horror is certainly not immune to that problem. However, that doesn't mean there haven't been some excellent "mainstream" (for lack of a better word) fright flicks starring black folk. For this list, I'm excluding all-black films (e.g., Blaxploitation, "urban,"...

Re-imagining your favorite horror movies with black casts.

Most actors and actresses have to pay their dues before they become famous, and one genre well versed in due-paying is horror. Popular with producers out to make a quick buck yet reviled by critics, horror movies are both high in number and low in esteem, making them perfect entry-level fare for aspiring thespians. In fact, some of the...

Representations of Africa in Horror Movies When Toto sang about Africa back in the day, it sounded so much more inviting than what we see coming out of Hollywood. Horror movies in particular have been guilty of perpetuating the image of “darkest Africa”, filled with ravenous animals and wild-eyed natives who wouldn’t even shake your hand before biting it off....

Horror movies tend to be thought of as hollow entertainment, but horror has a long history of addressing heavy social issues, whether directly or through symbolic or allegorical means. Perhaps the heaviest of heavy social issues is race relations -- especially in the United States -- but these horror/suspense movies dared to wade into those troubled waters by revolving...

2024 had its share of disappointments in Black horror cinema, but it had so many entertaining entries that it could afford the misfires. There's perhaps nothing more reflective of the growth of Black horror over the years than the fact that it is now allowed room to fail. The mere fact that I could compile a list with 30...

There was a time not too long ago that it would be difficult to create a “best of” list of horror movies featuring black leads in any given year, since there were so few of them, and the ones that did exist were of such dubious quality. But thankfully, things have changed in both quantity and quality over the...

Everyone knows that the "black guy" (or gal) usually dies in horror movies -- so much so, in some instances, the characters themselves seem to be aware of their inevitable fate. Thus, we have the phenomenon of black "heroic death," in which black characters (usually peripheral) voluntarily sacrifice themselves -- or at least, volunteer for tasks that mean certain...