In 2018, Jordan Peele, the awesome director and comedian, made history by snagging the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for his wicked horror flick, Get Out. It was a game-changer for horror buffs who thought their favorite genre never got enough love during award season. And for the black horror enthusiasts out there, it was like the ultimate jackpot. Get Out had been blowing minds since it dropped a year before that.
You know that classic scene in movies where the black dude dies right starting the movie? Well, Orlando Jones, the cool cat who played Harry in the 2001 flick Evolution, summed it up with, “I’ve seen this movie. The black dude dies first.” It’s been the norm in horror films for a hot minute.
Mark Harris, one of the brains behind The Black Guy Dies First: Black Horror Cinema From Fodder to Oscar, breaks it down like this:
“In horror movies the ultimate marginalisation of characters is to kill them. It epitomises how black characters in these movies and then other genres tend to be kind of second fiddle, thus expendable and so they get bumped off.”
Fast forward six years from Get Out’s release, and director Tim Story from the US has dropped a horror movie that takes a deep dive into the spooky world of blackness and horror flicks. The Blackening spins the tale of pals getting together over the Juneteenth weekend, that sweet US holiday that marks the end of slavery.
Lots of folks who yak about horror stuff see this as the OG example of blind casting. They didn’t just toss Jones in as the token black character; they picked him ’cause he was the real deal for the role. Ben, the dude who leads a ragtag crew through a zombie apocalypse in some backwoods farmhouse, doesn’t kick the bucket first. Sure, he bites it in the end, mistaken for a zombie, but he ain’t the first to go. The Blackening takes that idea up a notch. With its tagline, “We can’t all die first,” it’s all about recognizing the lay of the land and poking fun at those horror flick clichés.
Critics are eating it up. Lovia Gyarke over at The Hollywood Reporter put it like this: “A sturdy screenplay with a strong cast propels the Blackening, giving it satisfying momentum through its funny, stressful, and sometimes simultaneously funny and stressful moments,”
Watch it here!
