Tag: racism
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...
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,...
I feel like at one point, Blackstock Boneyard’s intention was to be taken seriously. Marketed as being "in the tradition of Candyman," it was originally titled Rightful, which sounds like either a Civil Rights Movement period drama or a Kirk Cameron right-to-life wet dream. It’s based on the true...
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...
Having been balls deep in black horror for a number of years, it’s always fascinating to come across a film of significance that’s been hidden in plain sight for so long. Nothing about the generically titled Night of the Strangler and its lily white poster screams blackness (and what...
Dear White People’s Justin Simien lends his satirical eye to horror in Bad Hair, a blend of social commentary and pop culture nostalgia wrapped in a supernatural curse film disguised as a workplace dramedy. The end product lacks some of the racial nuances and character complexities of Dear White...
Black Is Boo-Tiful
When Jordan Peeele’s Get Out became a breakout success in 2017, earning him the first Original Screenplay Oscar awarded to an African-American, "black horror movies" suddenly became the new hot property in Hollywood, with many people seeming to believe that this was an entirely new subset of...
Tales from the Hood was woke before woke was woke, addressing issues that are still central to the social justice conversation today, from police brutality to institutional racism to the socio-economic conditions of the inner city. As “hood cinema” fell out of favor by the turn of the century,...
Selling Vampires vs. the Bronx as “Attack the Block meets The Lost Boys” might be accurate, but it does a disservice to the film by setting an impossibly high standard that it can’t hope to reach. Judged on its own merits, however, Vampires vs. the Bronx is a rollicking,...
About 30 minutes into Antebellum, Eve (Janelle Monáe) tells fellow slave Julia (Kiersey Clemons), who’s eager to escape her captivity, “Be patient. Just keep going,” and I couldn’t help but think she was speaking to us in the audience, because the film was already amounting to an exercise in...
