When Jordan Peele’s debut horror film, Get Out, was released in early 2017, the movie both launched Peele’s career as a horror filmmaker—a clear break from his past as one half of Comedy Central duo Key & Peele—and marked a new age of Black-centered horror (or at the very least appeared to).

In the critically acclaimed film, the Black protagonist, Chris (Daniel Kaluuya), visits his white girlfriend’s (Allison Williams) parents for the first time, and tensions rise when her seemingly open-minded parents hide dark secrets.

Get Out subverts expectations by poking holes in the concept of the “white saviour,” bringing racial microaggressions to light, and playing with the trope of the “final girl,” to create a horror movie that blends paranormal elements with the painful reality of racism in the US.

Even though Jordan Peele’s debut saw massive success, Black voices (and particularly Black directors) remain few and far between in the horror industry, despite decades of work put in by Black creatives. 

While the first widely recognised horror film to portray a Black character as its protagonist is the 1968 film Night of the Living Dead, Black-centered horror did not start until the 1970s, with the emergence of the blaxploitation film.

These films, such as Blacula (1972), Ganja & Hess (1973) or Sugar Hill (1974), heavily relied on the reappropriation of anti-Black tropes and stereotypes (such as the Magical Negro or the Black Seductress), but applied them to Black-centered narratives.

While blaxploitation carved a place for Black stories in the horror genre, they often sparked controversy through their use of stereotype. Though Black horror eventually moved from blaxploitation films to Southern Gothic adaptations (such as the 1998 adaptation of Toni Morrison’s Beloved) and urban horror (films that related to hip-hop, drugs, police, and crime), these stories continued to focus on “trauma porn,” turning the painful complexities of the Black American experience into a spectacle.

Eventually, audiences grew tired of the tropes, which led to a large-scale disappearance of the genre until Get Out brought Black horror back into the mainstream. In his later films, Jordan Peele further emphasised how Blackness and horror could coexist beyond the obvious conversations about race present in his debut (or in Boots Riley’s 2018 debut, Sorry to Bother You). 

Although today, Black horror is largely synonymous with the filmography of Jordan Peele—and while it is important to note that he opened the door for more Black filmmakers in the horror genre—Ryan Coogler’s Sinners shows a different side of Black identity, racism, and the horror format.

In Sinners, there are two groups of antagonists; on one hand, Remmick (Jack O’Connell) and the vampires, who rely on a shared history of oppression to coerce their victims (as Remmick has the experience of being an Irishman in early 20th century America), and on the other hand, the Ku Klux Klan, whose threat to the protagonists’ lives are grounded in realism.

The protagonists’ Blackness is intrinsically linked to the film’s horror elements, yet this extends beyond simply the colour of their skin: the characters’ Black Southern beliefs (for example Annie’s (Wunmi Mosaku) knowledge of Hoodoo), religion (as Sammie (Miles Caton) is repeatedly called “Preacher Boy”) and love for music (both in the juke joint setting and the importance of Sammie’s guitar) are both what make them targets and, in some cases, contribute to their survival. In Sinners, Coogler makes it clear that there is a place for Blackness in horror, without a character’s Black identity being synonymous with victimhood. 

When discussing Black identity in horror films, however, it is important to recognise the disappointing lack of non-American storylines. Even when the actors themselves are not American (such as Daniel Kaluuya in Get Out and Nope, or Lupita Nyong’o in Us), the characters often are, which only pushes forward one side of the Black experience.

In fact, in the last five years, the only non-American, English-language, Black-centered horror film to have successfully made some form of a splash has been His House, released on Netflix in 2020. The film—starring Sinners’ Wunmi Mosaku, alongside Sope Dirisu and Matt Smith—follows a couple who flee South Sudan and seek asylum in London, where they are given temporary housing, but quickly find themselves haunted by their past.

Although the film—which was director Remi Weekes’ full feature film debut—was nominated for 14 British Independent Film Awards and three BAFTAs, it remains Weekes’ sole full-length feature film, a disappointment for the near future of Black British horror. 

While Jordan Peele may have reignited public interest in Black horror, the genre did not begin and end with Get Out. Instead, Peele’s filmography simply opened the doors for more Black voices in horror, and we can only hope that Sinners marks the start of a trend.  

Image Credit: Micah Petyt