Hello reader, I want to play a game: Look at the cast of a horror movie and guess exactly who’s going to die first. Did you say the only person of color? Me, too! Do you think Hollywood knows the consistent erasure of people of color in horror makes for horrendously predictable plots?

Fun and games aside, Hollywood’s dismissal of black people in the horror genre may go beyond erasure. The negative portrayal of people of color in horror movies has historically presented non-white races as monstrous and villainous. In fact, in blockbuster horror, black people are not just side characters who die first: they are what the audience should fear.

A Brief History of Hollywood Horror

What’s your favorite scary movie? It was probably inspired by a horror novel. Unfortunately, racism in horror has its origins in literature. In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the infamous monster is described as having a “horrid” complexion and black lips. The monster is feared for having impressive muscles and athletic capability. These traits were all attributes that were, at the time, associated with African slaves and colonized subjects. Frankenstein feared his monster because he viewed it as a subject that he could not subdue – one of the biggest fears of the white British colonial audience. Note here that Frankenstein fears the capabilities of the monster because of his belief that he is genetically and mentally superior to it; He, like the novel’s white audience, is disturbed by the notion that a creature he views as inferior to him could physically best him, disrupting the “natural” order of things.

Unsurprisingly, the association of black people with monsters in horror continued into the emergence of horror films. The origins of zombie movies in particular display the fears of white audiences. In the first feature-length zombie film, aptly titled White Zombie, a white woman visiting Haiti is turned into a zombie through a botched version of “African voodoo.” She’s victimized as her newfound zombie-hood threatens her sexual purity, allowing her fiance to swoop in and save her by fighting the other zombies in the film – all of whom just happen to be African enslaved people. 

The relationship of movie zombies with voodoo, African slaves, and minimal intelligence has some not-so-subtle racial connotations, but ultimately highlights the true fears of white American audiences: the fear of being overtaken by The Other. The Other in this case, of course, is black people.

Black Horror’s Origins

There are certain rules that one must abide by in order to successfully survive a blockbuster horror movie: Be young, white, and beautiful. Every day, Black Americans live many of the horrors that white Americans have the thrill of experiencing through the silver screen and then leaving the theater…with those fears left behind just like the popcorn at their seat. The fears that Black Americans experience aren’t based in paranoia surrounding their world and existing power structures being dismantled. Instead, they live life as “The Other,” whom existing institutions are designed actively against. The emergence of black horror does not rely on creating a monster representative of a foreign enemy –. Rather, black horror aims to address the everyday oppression faced by Black Americans, emphasizing the dismissal of their suffering by other demographics.

Black horror has its origins in blaxploitation, a subgenre of exploitation films in the 70s. Blaxploitation were films that big studios cashed in on to make a profit from black urban audiences. They portrayed negative stereotypes, greatly playing up gang violence, drugs, and sex. Despite their one-dimensional depictions of Black Americans, the movies were very successful and for the first time, African-Americans were centered in Hollywood narratives. Of the more notable blaxploitation films, Blacula, emerged as one of the first horror movies with a Black lead (the movie’s plot is exactly what it sounds like, by the way). Blaxploitation movies may have popularized black narratives, but they were still written and produced by non-Black entities capitalizing off of Black audiences. Black was in fashion.

The Peele Effect

From there, black horror developed somewhat in the shadows of its White Hollywood counterpart, until the appearance of Jordan Peele in the industry. The release of Get Out (2017) saw a skyrocket in interest in black horror, showing Hollywood execs that audiences had a deep investment in these stories. Horror fans had been slogging through copy-and-paste variations of paranormal horror movies, when Get Out presented a new and refreshing perspective on the genre. Get Out answers what it feels like to be constantly seen as The Other, feared and villainized. The movie observes the relationship between fear and obsession that White America has historically had with black bodies, and the paranoia that can come with being an African American facing both constant scrutiny and harassment In its ending, the movie reverses the racial dynamic of previous horror movies, presenting the perspective of the monstrous Other. As Chris, a Black man, outsmarts and bests his White kidnappers, he embodies the fears that white horror warns of. However, rather than a horrific moment, Chris’ defeat of his captors is presented as a triumphant victory of a Black American against exploitation at the hands of white society.

Black horror emerged through the necessity to defy the harmful and damaging portrayal of black people as monstrous. Rather than portraying Black people as a potential threat to the purity and innocence of White leads, black horror aims to center Black narratives, showing the perspective of what it is to constantly feel like The Other. The film subverts the themes of purity and corruption of white America through The black Other. Peele criticizes the capitalistic obsession with Black bodies, defying stereotypical portrayals of Black Americans like in blaxploitation. The genre has exploded in popularity because rather than an accessory or a monster, black horror films depict African-Americans as people.