Monday, March 18, 2024

Tag: Africa

Beast
In 2012, Liam Neeson made cinematic history by punching wolves in the face in The Grey. A decade later, in Beast, Idris Elba tells Neeson to hold his beer while he cold-cocks a lion. Such is the world in which we live today; everyone’s a showoff. Elba plays Nate Samuels,...
Saloum
While American horror movies from Black creatives have gained a reputation in recent years (thanks in no small part to Jordan Peele) for incorporating racial and social commentary, the same can be said for black horror from around the globe. After all, black folks the world over have plenty...
Good Madam
In the US, Black domestic servitude still conjures antiquated images of Hattie McDaniel and Butterfly McQueen birthin' babies and whatnot, a concept that is, as they say, gone with the wind. In countries like Brazil and South Africa, however, domestic servitude goes hand in hand with Blackness, an ever-present...
His House
With his remarkable feature debut His House, British writer-director Remi Weekes achieves what seasoned horror filmmakers struggle to pull off: tackling social issues like immigration, xenophobia, genocide and gender roles, alongside weighty themes like psychological trauma and grief, all while delivering throat-clenching scares. It’s one of the rare movies...
Daniel Kaluuya in Get Out
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...
The Tokoloshe
2013’s Ghetto Goblin was a cheapie from South Africa whose name change from Blood Tokoloshe reflected a cheesiness inherent in the production, but The Tokoloshe is a much more polished, professional affair that thankfully avoided a name change for American consumption, so we don’t have to deal with watching...
Last Ones Out
Africa in horror movies is like Cleveland in real life: nothing good comes from going there. Its sole purpose, it seems, is to serve as home to ravenous animals and menacing supernatural entities, along with the hapless natives who fall prey to them so the white protagonists don’t have...
Ojuju movie poster
There's something universal about the nightmarish thrill of watching someone being eaten alive by reanimated corpses that has led to the propagation of zombie movies around the world. I've seen living dead films from six of the seven continents, and frankly, I can't say with 100% certainty there isn't...
The Dead zombie movie
An unnamed war-torn region of West Africa becomes home to atrocities beyond any it has ever witnessed when the dead begin to rise and consume the living. Amidst the chaos, an American military engineer named Brian Murphy (Rob Freeman) boards the last evacuation flight out of the area, only...
The Vampire's Ghost horror movie
The Vampire's Ghost is a vintage horror movie from Republic Pictures that, like most horror movies from Republic Pictures, has slipped through the cracks of public consciousness, overshadowed by Universal's classic monsters. That doesn't mean they aren't quality films, though. Take The Vampire's Ghost, for instance. Not only is it...