Black Horror IRL

  The 2015 short film Paralysis directed by R. Shanea Williams follows a 30-year-old woman named Jessica who is a photographer and is suffering from chronic sleep paralysis. At the beginning of the short film, Jessica expresses that she is not taking on any new clients and it is revealed that she experienced childhood trauma when her mother passed away when she was 10. During a conversation with her father, it alludes that Jessica has a history of self-harm as a deep parallel scar is shown on her wrist. For the entirety of the film, it is clear that Jessica’s life is unraveling and constraining. For the majority of the film taking place in Jessica’s apartment, the lines between reality and fantasy are blurred. Just like Jessica has a dwindling perception of time and reality, so too is the audience sure what is real and what is a dream. Jessica’s sense of personhood begins to dissolve as two variations of her sense of self emerge, her nighttime self and her wakeful self. As the perc...

  In The Bride Before you, one of the six installments of the collected short films included in Horror Noire conceptualized problematic themes of colorism and gender favoritism that are embedded into the social landscape of the modern African American community. The short story follows a young prosperous Black couple, although they are wealthy they are desperate to conceive a child. Full of desperation and frustration, the young wife confides in her trusted housemaid to connect with a local voodoo practitioner. After following the instructions the young woman falls pregnant and births a light-skinned son. The son grows up and is a prosperous man; however, the house seemingly is haunted as it frequently shakes and growls. As a grown man, the son presents a beautiful and wealthy debutante he intends to marry named Clara. Clara pressures the housemaid into allowing her into the attic to inspect the source of the noises, and she is killed by a strange figure. Devastated by the loss, th...

  In the film, The Eve’s Bayou (1997) the plot follows an upper-middle-class Black family living in a small racially homogenous city near the Louisiana Bayou. Before watching this film, I had no clue of the plot or the themes--and this was probably one of the most uniquely disturbing movies I have seen in a long time (and I’m an avid horror film). This film falls within the gray area of gothic and horror, but nonetheless, this film is powerful because it executes the difficult job of portraying the horrors that can happen within the household. What pained me throughout watching this film, was the adultification of Eve and Cisely--especially with Eve. Eve the middle child of Eve and Louis Baptiste carried the stress of trying to keep her family together despite all of the disturbing secrets and insecurity in the household. Her father, while a stable financial provider is an absent father staying late from the house and engaging in extramarital relationships-and completely unaware an...

  I think what makes The Good House an authentically terrifying piece of horror literature is its unique duality of real-life tragedy and fantasy of the demonic forces. My family is from Trinidad and Tobago in the West Indies and voodoo practice is something that I have always believed in, and from a young age I’ve been warned to stay away from negative entities--so much so that as a young girl my parents did not allow me to go trick or treating with all of the other kids in my neighborhood. As they seriously believed, that the line between life and death was dissolved on that one evening. But that’s beside the point. What I am trying to get across while it’s easy to point and laugh at and assume that the practice of voodoo is fictitious and performative for many people (like some of my extended family members) voodoo is its own religion and serious faith that people live their lives under. I think the Good House does a fantastic and difficult job of honoring the integrity of voodo...

  Jordan Peele’s 2019 cinematic masterpiece Us, serves as a cautionary tale of the dangers and possible societal destruction stemming from institutionally embedded inequalities and inequities that starkly cause division of class in America’s Capitalist landscape. Unlike Jordan Peele’s earlier film Get Out which showcases the idea of otherness with a special emphasis on social racial dynamics from microaggressions, white privilege, and outright racism--Us takes an interesting angle and explores the complexity of the black middle class. The plot of Us follows a Black family on vacation in Santa Cruz (a predominantly white area) and their revenge and bloodthirsty doppelgangers who have long waited for their opportunity to kill their counterparts, take their place and achieve justice for only being able to live a partial existence as outcasts below in the literal trenches of society. The Black doppelgangers as well as the rest of the doppelgangers symbolically portray the hidden popula...

  Jordan Peele’s Get Out which premiered in 2017 initially presents a rather mundane and relatable story that many minorities can resonate with/ The film in its entirety offers a new perspective of horror that highlights the ongoing issues of racial dynamics that Black Americans experience on a regular basis while simply existing in white spaces. The premise of the film follows a young black man (Chris) who meets his white girlfriend's (Rose) family for the first time in a secluded rural area. This film overall does an excellent job of portraying the awkward microaggressions African Americans can expect to experience moving through predominantly white spaces. For example, when Chris initially meets Rose’s parents upon arrival at their family's home, Rose’s white father immediately makes racially motivated comments and incorporates black slang into his vernacular, and Rose claims that he doesn’t usually speak this way. I believe that this scene (as well as others following it) s...