Black filmmakers are revitalizing the horror genre.
We go inside this fall’s most chilling films Antebellum, Bad Hair, and the new Candyman.
Historically, being a Black actor in a horror movie hasn’t been much fun.
Credit: Illustration by Adam Maida for EW
It’s something Elle Lorraine learned growing up in Texas.
Well, the bloody tide has finally started to turn.
“And also: The film is fun.”
Tobin Yellan/Hulu
“There’s an urgency to unpacking systemic racism.
Horror provides unique forms of catharsis.
Resistance is baked into the formula.
Everett Collection
“That’s the nutrient I get from horror: ‘How do I fight back?'”
Representation of Black people in the genre has a grim history.
He was left to die on what would eventually become Chicago’s Cabrini-Green projects his present-day haunting grounds.
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II stars as haunted painter Anthony McCoy in Nia DaCosta’s “Candyman.".Parrish Lewis/Universal Pictures and MGM Pictures
Justin Simien
“Black identity is already part of the horror genre.
I lived in the projects, and that’s where Candyman lived, too.”
Peele also was shaped byCandyman.
Matt Kennedy/Lionsgate
The triumph promptly broke down barriers for others.
Despite its success as well as the subsequent Netflix TV series he had trouble gettingBad Hairoff the ground.
People thought of Simien as a comedy director that is, untilGet Out.
Cindy Ord/Getty Images
“This Black horror movie stopped feeling risky to investors [after]Get Out.”
(Made on a $4.5 million budget,Get Outultimately grossed more than $255 million globally.)
What she gets, literally, isa killer weave.
Presley Ann/Getty Images
For Simien,Get Out’s frankness about racism was liberating when it came to makingBad Hair.
“I realized I don’t have to mince words.
The real evils are white supremacy and the patriarchy.
John Sciulli/Getty Images
I’m no longer afraid to say that becauseGet Outjust did that,” says Simien.
“You make horror movies about what terrifies you.
“We were able to expand on it in a way that maybe you couldn’t in 1992.”
“We address gentrification and the way that gentrification is a sort of violence.
Going back in time,Antebellum(on VOD Sept. 18) opts for a more grounded approach.
Conceived in 2018,Antebellumspeaks chillingly to 2020, as protests against systemic racism press on nationwide.
I don’t know how much [more] horror it’s possible for you to get.”
Horror, put simply, provides a fitting artistic vehicle for these narratives.
And these aren’t history lessons, either.
They’re movies, after allbloody, scary, and at times sharply funny.
“Our responsibility is to thrillingly entertain our audience,” Bush says.
“If you don’t do that, then the rest of it is a moot point.
It doesn’t even matter.”
Perhaps that’s where these films’ true power lies.
And I hope I can make a movie.'
And [Lemmons was] like, ‘you’re free to’t hope.
You just have to do it.
“That really stuck with me, and it just kind of changed my viewpoint.”
Stanley Kubrick
For Bush, theShiningfilmmaker “is the best to have ever done it,” he says.
Additional reporting by Clark Collis and Marcus Jones.
