Posted on February 8, 2019

Horror Noire Reviewed – and 6 Essential Black Horror Films

Dawn Keetley

Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror (2019) traces nothing short of a revolution. It begins with The Birth of a Nation (1915), which perfectly illustrates one of commentator Tananarive Due’s main points, “Black history is black horror.” It ends with the blowing open of restrictions on when and how African Americans become part of the horror tradition. From the most despicable of stereotypes in 1915, we’ve arrived at a moment when African American creators and actors can finally tell the horror stories they’ve long wanted to tell. This film—and where it ends—is thoroughly inspiring.

Directed by Xavier Burgin, Horror Noire is written and produced by Ashlee Blackwell, who runs the website, Graveyard Shift Sisters, and Danielle Burrows. It’s based on Robin R. Means Coleman’s 2011 book, Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films from the 1890s to Present (Routledge)—and Professor Means Coleman is one of the three principal commentators who tell the story of African American horror. The other two commentators are Ashlee Blackwell herself and Tananarive Due, writer of horror and speculative fiction.

Check out the preview for Horror Noire:

The film is a perfect combination of critical commentary from Means Coleman, Blackwell, and Due along with more informal contributions from a host of African American directors and actors, who sit in pairs in a movie theatre and talk more informally about their experiences with horror. We hear from, among others, Tony Todd (Candyman), Rachel True (The Craft), Ernest Dickerson (Demon Knight, Bones), Keith David (The Thing, They Live), Ken Foree (Dawn of the Dead), Kelly Jo Minter (The People under the Stairs), Rusty Cundieff (Tales from the Hood), and William Crain (Blacula). Jordan Peele (Get Out) also appears throughout. These black horror creators and actors are also fans, and what they say about what influenced and excited them helps identify the films that have broken ground in the horror tradition (see below).

Related: R. Robin Means Coleman, Horror Noire: Black in American Horror Films from the 1890s to Present

Horror Noire traces black horror film through the decades, from 1915 to the present, identifying trends, shifts in representation, and the ways in which black horror has responded to black history. The documentary is, throughout, about black experience—and this shapes a film that is profoundly different from other horror documentaries. While Horror Noire, for instance, tells the story of 1968’s Night of the Living Dead—its connection to the Civil Right Movement and the groundbreaking character of Ben (Duane Jones)—it actually subordinates this familiar story of a film directed by a white man (George A. Romero) to the story of Blacula (William Crain, 1972), which was directed by and starred (William Marshall) African Americans. It is Blacula, perhaps more than Night of the Living Dead, that commentators identify as paradigm-shifting. It is striking how often this particular history has been erased from mainstream documentaries of horror. Nightmares in Red, White and Blue: The Evolution of the American Horror Film (2009), for instance, completely ignores Blaxploitation generally and Blacula in particular. After watching Horror Noire, this omission seems all the more unforgivable.

William Marshall in William Crain’s Blacula

Because of its focus on African Americans’ experience, Horror Noire also pays attention to the influence of different historical events than are typically highlighted in horror documentaries (the Depression, Vietnam etc.). I found utterly illuminating, for instance, Ashlee Blackwell’s connection of the Tuskegee Experiment (1932-1972) to a strong strand of medical experimentation in black horror—from Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde (1976), to The Girl with All the Gifts (2016), Get Out (2017), and The First Purge (2018).

Commentators also take up the roles and stereotypes that have long confined black actors in horror. Rachel True (who played Rochelle in the 1996 film, The Craft), in particular, has some fabulous things to say about playing supporting roles in horror films in the 90s. She talks about the number of different times and different ways she’s had to say the line, “Are you ok?,” because it’s never about how she—the black character, the black friend—is doing. It’s always about, as she puts it, “Are you, white-person-in-peril ok?”

Rachel True playing the supportive friend

Everyone in Horror Noire identifies the sea change we’re living through since the turn of the 21^st century. Robin Means Coleman talks about how horror at this time became “self-reflexive,” and all the stereotypes, conventions, and tropes of black characters that horror film had relied on for so long got exposed. Tananarive Due describes how “we’ve shifted from being the focal point of the fear, the Other, to being the heroes, the icons.”

From Other to Hero (Sennia Nanua as Melanie in The Girl with All the Gifts)

Jordan Peele, who features frequently in this film, most certainly had a hand in the escalation of this revolution with his 2017 film Get Out. But Horror Noire makes it clear that Get Out is not, and will not be, alone. There’s a past behind Get Out—and there’s a future ahead of it.

I’ll end this review with the final words of the film, first from Tananarive Due and then from Jordan Peele.

Tananarive Due: “These are stories by black creators for black viewers. If whites want to enjoy it, fine, but it’s not about them, right? It’s about us.”

Jordan Peele: “The industry realized, oh yeah, white people will see movies about non-white people. They will. They’ll see. You just have to make them.”

Jordan Peele’s last words (which are the last words of the film) contain an intriguing double meaning: “You just have to make them.” Is he talking about making black horror films (to which whites will assuredly go)? Probably. But the sentence also suggests that you have to make (as in, compel) white people to experience black stories—and I think this meaning is important too. Because one thing Horror Noire makes clear is that the process of getting black actors in lead roles, getting black directors behind the camera, and getting black stories told has not been easy.

Essential viewing:

Son of Ingagi (Richard C. Kahn, Spencer Williams, 1940)