Black horror

Black horror (also known as racial horror and horror noir) is a horror subgenre that focuses on African-American characters and narratives. It often involves the use of social and political commentary to compare themes of racism and other lived experiences of Black Americans to common horror themes and tropes. Early entries in the genre include the Spencer Williams Jr. film Son of Ingagi (1940), and George A. Romero's film Night of the Living Dead (1968), which is considered one of the first Black horror films because its lead role is played by a Black actor, Duane Jones. Blaxploitation horror films of the 1970s, namely Blacula (1972) and the vampire film Ganja & Hess (1973), became prominent examples of the genre. Other examples appeared during the 1990s, including the Bernard Rose film Candyman (1992) and Tales from the Hood (1995), an anthology film directed by Rusty Cundieff which has been described as the "godfather of Black horror".

Black horror became especially popular after Get Out, a horror film about racism and the 2017 directorial debut of comedian Jordan Peele, became an international box office success, winning the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Peele went on to direct the Black horror films Us (2019) and Nope (2022). He also produced the HBO Black horror television series Lovecraft Country (2021), and the film Candyman (2021) directed by Nia DaCosta, a sequel to the 1992 film of the same name. Some critics argued that, by 2020, Black horror had entered its Golden Age, while others criticized many of the Black horror projects that followed Get Out—including Lovecraft Country, the Amazon series Them (2021), and the film Antebellum (2020)—as unsubtle and exploitative of Black trauma.

Black horror is similarly explored in novels, including Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson (1998), Fledgling by Octavia E. Butler (2005), The Gilda Stories by Jewelle Gomez (1991), and The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle (2016).

Robin R. Means Coleman, a professor at Texas A&M University and the author of the 2011 book Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films from the 1890s to Present, wrote in 2019 for The Conversation that Black horror films were "created by blacks, star blacks or focus on black life and culture". Tananarive Due, author and professor at University of California, Los Angeles who, as of 2019^[update], teaches classes on Black horror, stated that Black horror "doesn't necessarily have to be made by Black creators" but that it typically "is made by Black filmmakers and does star black protagonists to tell a Black story" and that "sometimes it is enough just to have a Black character in a film for it to be considered Black horror". She also defined Black characters in Black horror films as "actually hav[ing] agency in the film and maybe even surviv[ing]" while exceeding the stereotypical roles of Black characters in horror films "who were just sidelined or monster bait".

Due has compared African-American history to the genre, stating, "Black history is Black horror," while Ryan Poll, for the Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, wrote, "For African Americans, horror is not a genre, but a structuring paradigm," adding that horror works "because White people fundamentally imagine the world without horror". Due has stated that a more common theme than race in Black horror is "the will to fight back and survive against overwhelming force". Means Coleman and author Mark Harris, owner of the website Black Horror Movies, similarly wrote in their book The Black Guy Dies First: Black Horror Cinema from Fodder to Oscar that "the Black presence in horror, as in America, has always been about resilience".

Black horror films often compare the lived experiences of the Black American to horror narratives, depicting them through themes of racism and its effects, such as police brutality, the Atlantic slave trade, lynching, discrimination and transgenerational trauma. Jenna Benchretrit of CBC wrote that Black horror was "an expansive subgenre that reclaims the Black community's place in a film tradition where they have often been the first to die or are depicted as the monster". Mark Harris compared the horror film trope of killing off Black characters first to marginalization, stating, "It epitomises how black characters in these movies and then other genres tend to be kind of second fiddle, thus expendable and so they get bumped off." For Vulture, Robert Daniels defined Black horror films as horror films "directed by and starring Black folks". Stephanie Holland of The Root also described Black horror films as horror films "that feature prominent Black stories and heroes" despite horror not having "always been the most welcoming [genre] for Black characters". Jason Parham of Wired wrote that Black horror filmmakers "let loose arguments about class conflict or policing or the psychological terror of race, and how whiteness eats at the mind".

Tonja Renée Stidhum of The Root wrote that racial and social commentary were "basically the core of the genre, historically". Laura Bradley of The Daily Beast noted that Black horror films often focus on "the fear of moral corruption, particularly by proximity to white people and institutions" and frequently include references to Christianity. For Refinery29, Ineye Komonibo wrote that Black horror films are "often ...imparting a moral lesson or highlighting some political struggle within our society". Black horror is also sometimes referred to as racial horror, horror noir, or horror noire.

Before the first Black horror films were created, American horror films scarcely featured Black actors. Those that did often did so mockingly or depicted them as primitive in the vein of D.W. Griffith's 1915 film The Birth of a Nation. Black actors occasionally appeared in lead roles in horror films, such as Joel Fluellen's role of Arobi in the 1957 film Monster from Green Hell or Georgette Harvey's role of Mandy in the 1934 film Chloe, Love Is Calling You, or in voodoo films like Ouanga (1936), which starred Fredi Washington as the mistress of a plantation owner, but even those roles were largely in the service of helping white characters. Black actors Willie Best and Eddie "Rochester" Anderson became well known in the 1930s for their servant roles in monster movies, in which they typically exaggeratedly bulged their eyes in shock before running away, but they often fed into racial stereotypes. According to Due, Black characters in horror films were often relegated to tropes such as the Magical Negro, Sacrificial Negro, or the Spiritual Guide. The 1922 Oscar Micheaux horror race film The Dungeon and the Spencer Williams Jr. films Son of Ingagi (1940), which was the first science fiction horror film to have an all-Black cast, and The Blood of Jesus (1941) are considered some of the earliest Black horror films. Ashlee Blackwell, a cowriter of the 2019 documentary film Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror, stated that Son of Ingagi "fully flesh[ing] out its black characters" was "revolutionary".