Growing up, my father was a professor of theatre at The Ohio State University. It felt like we always had movies playing in at least one room of the house, and sometimes the same movie in different rooms if we were in a scuffle. This is how we passed time in some of the cold winter months in Ohio. Today, my father-in-law works in the film industry too. Film is what put food on the table for my wife for over 20 years. I’m grateful for the Los Angeles film industry and it’s one of the resources that I cherish. But I’m deeply bothered by the lack of progress in Hollywood to share more black stories. We have fallen into a world where safe and predictable movies are receiving the largest amount of funding. We are suppressing our brightest stars at a time when our country needs black creativity and entertainment more than ever.
The Ocean’s 11 film of the 1960s starring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr, Peter Lawford, Joey Bishop and Angie Dickinson was a star-studded film. The remake of Ocean’s 11 in 2001 starring George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Don Cheadle, Bernie Mac (rest in power), Casey Affleck and others was the same fun, clever and lighthearted film, packed with A-list stars. It became one of my all-time favorites. It’s a high-stakes Las Vegas casino heist movie… easy hit.
But what could this movie have been? The casting decision, regardless if it fit into the original book, screenplay or movie, had massive opportunity costs. The competitive banter gave birth to a hyper-intellectual stereotype in the digital age, which was exclusively attached to white men. What if one of those guys in the back was a new revolutionary character like T’Challa? Behind each of those faces in the movie poster, someone lost their big shot. We lost a voice, a message, or a character that could have disrupted the world in a positive way.
We are tired of Matt Damon and Mark Wahlberg movies. It’s nothing against white men, it’s the “only white men” that’s the problem. They casted so many white people in The Great Wall that my head wanted to explode into white powder. It’s hard enough watching Mulan in English, but an all-white imperial army from China is sketchy casting. Year after year, production studios learn valuable lessons about risk-to-return. They can make much higher profits, consistently, if they opt for smaller budgets with more diverse casts and higher authenticity.
We want stories, ideas, screenplays, and bright new worlds like Wakanda to challenge cultural standards and break stereotypes. I grew up wearing Superman and Batman capes around the house, and I hope my children do one day, too. But they will also be introduced to outfits from Miles Morales—the first black Spiderman in an alternate digital universe who fights alongside white Spiderman. These are our heroes.
Miles doesn’t take away from Spiderman, he enhances it. Why not let everyone be Spiderman and celebrate some of the critical wins this comic book delivers film after film, like, “with great power comes great responsibility” and “a hero is just someone who doesn't give up.”
Scare Tactics
As we start my list of scariest movies to black people, I think it will be note some of the scariest situations to humans, regardless of age or race, based on a recent survey conducted by Slate:
devil in little white girls (Exorcist)
homeless doppelgängers with scissors (Us)
aliens entering or exiting our bodies (Alien)
stuck in a hotel with Jack Nicholson (The Shining)
die if we talk (A Quiet Place), have sex (It Follows) or swim (Jaws)
anything with saws, chainsaws, cannibals or Texas
This is the Top 9 Scary Movies to Black People.
#1 Us
In a 2019 review by Slate, Jordan Peele’s sophomore win in Us ranked in the top five of every category presented to its viewers. It crushed box office hits as one of the largest debuts ever for an original horror film, and largest opening since Avatar over 10 years prior. Everything from the trailer to the twist of Us is bothersome.
One of my good friends, Ade Adeniji, is a writer for Inside Philanthropy and also a movie critic for Rotten Tomatoes. He isn’t just being the contrarian with his 3 out of 5 vote for Us last year. His piece, “I Got 3 Outta 5 On It” unwrapped the very frustrating ending (spoilers), but had high praises for the frightening nature of doppelgängers and the accurate depiction of middle class black families in white areas.
You can read other movie reviews on Ade’s personal Soapbox. Ade was an inspiration for me to start this newsletter, so please follow his work on philanthropy, film, music, culture and NBA.
#2 Amistad
Amistad (the Spanish work for "friendship") was a Stephen Spielberg movie that is almost too important for its own good. So few movies like this get proper funding and make it to the box office, and even fewer are created by such famous directors. This story needed to be told.
In January 1839, Portuguese slave hunters landed on present-day Sierra Leone and abducted hundreds of Africans and transported them to present-day Cuba, a Spanish colony at the time. Of the hundreds of slaves, only 53 survived the long voyage, but they eventually revolted in a brutal battle and seized control of the entire Amistad ship. They killed its Spanish captain and veered the ship towards America in a desperate attempt to escape. No spoilers here, just U.S. history.
I must warn you, it’s tough to watch. I vividly remember an argument between my parents when I was young about whether or not it was appropriate for me to watch Amistad at about 15 years old (driving age). They knew it was R-rated and violent, but maybe assumed I was immune to it because of the exposure to so many violent video games like Mortan Kombat and GTA. My dad (black) was upset that my middle school teachers (white) glossed over all the gruesome details about the slave trade. If the schools wanted to cover the slave trade, we should cover it in detail.
(Please skip to #3 if you’re weak to graphic content…)
It was too early. I remember crying. I just wasn’t ready. They hunters ripped the women from their children and threw the children overboard, beat the men into submission, threw the sick and elderly off the ship, stripped everyone naked of their pride and dignity, hosed them down like cattle, raped the women in front of their men, chained everyone together, stacked them in the lower cabins with no food or water, and left them there to die or survive. Splinters from the ship dug into their backs as they tried to sleep. Spielberg spared no details with Amistad.
Eventually, we turned it off. I don’t have strong resentment towards my parents for letting me see Amistad at that time. Seeing them argue about it at least prepared me for what I was about to see. It’s what gives me the power to write confidently about this topic today. Some of the scenes in Amistad still haunt me, but I’d still rather receive the story in an art form, in my own house with my parents, than have it spoon-fed to me in a textbook with numbers and statistics.
Here’s how textbooks explain the slave trade:
An estimated 12 million Africans were forcibly shipped across the Atlantic Ocean to the “New World.” Of those, at least 1.5 million black lives were lost.
This is how my parents explained the slave trade:
We must decide if we hand our children the textbook or let them see Amistad. One thing is for sure: you will raise a much different child if you choose to show them this movie. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a movie can be worth a lifetime of not having ignorant points of view about race.
#3 The Truman Show
The authenticity of this film, based in a real small town in Florida, makes it one of the most underrated dark comedies ever. But, to many black people, The Truman Show is also a psychological horror film, much like Get Out. The 1998 movie by director Peter Weir stars Jim Carrey as Truman Burbank, a white male who grew up living what seems like an ordinary life without knowing he’s on a massive-budget TV show and he’s the main character. Everyone from his wife, his father, his best friend, and all his work colleagues are actors, and Truman spends most of the movie trying to find the truth. If you need help believing this one falls in the horror genre, here’s a reshoot of the trailer as a horror film.
The Truman Show is an exposé on gaslighting, and everyone is trying to profit off his fame. If Truman leaves, everyone is without a job, so he’s a slave of his own false reality where he’s the star. Take the scene in the kitchen, for example. They did an excellent job showing the lengths these actors are willing to go at the expense of poor, confused Truman. In this scene, Meryl is in psychological warfare, and that’s what makes this movie so creepy for black people in general.
Most of us probably have a Meryl Burbank in our lives, and gaslighting is a topic that spans the entire psychology field. A good piece on gaslighting is Film School Rejects, which had this interesting take on the hidden messages of The Truman Show:
“Truman’s relationship with his wife Meryl is built on gaslighting. She repeatedly dismisses his concerns and observations. Every object in Truman’s life informs him that his gut instinct is wrong. Truman is kept scared by the world to keep him from creating his own life.”
The Truman Show falls into the black horror genre just like Get Out due to its cultural relevance to life in America. The Truman Show toys with the concept that a life built on a stack of lies isn’t worth living, and anyone keeping you from the truth is more your enemy than your friend, just like Truman’s “best friend” Marlon. Ironically, the New York playwright Mark Dunn filed a lawsuit against the film’s producers claiming they stole the idea from The Malcolm Show, his 1992 play that was pitched to the producers of The Truman Show a few years prior.
#4 Babadook
Let me start by saying the gays have claimed Babadook. The namesake of this historic 2014 Australian film has become a queer icon due to its unspecific gender, use of makeup, and other reasons. Everything from the riddles to the scrapbook gives you such a nostalgic feeling about your childhood, then slowly destroys it.
Black people love Babadook, too, and find him/her/it spooky for entirely different reasons. I had to think hard about why so many of my friends get creeped out by this movie. The word I decided to go with is “claustrophobic.” The movie is stressful and dramatic, thanks to the lead performance from Essie Davis. I mean, just look at her face. Any white lady that gets this afraid of something, black people notice.
Babadook was a huge success for director Jennifer Kent, who followed up with a quality performance in Nightingdale a few years later. Kent was praised as a fresh, creative feminist voice in cinema with a bright future.
#5 Requiem for a Dream
You can tell your kids not to do drugs, or you can show them. I think the D.A.R.E. program would be a lot more effective if they just showed this movie in schools. Requiem for a Dream follows the lives of four very different people, from uniquely different backgrounds, and follows their relationship with drugs. Extremely sad, extremely scary, and extremely real. This is our opioid addiction on full display on the cinema, a disease that can disproportionately affect black people.
I had the movie poster on my wall all through college just to remind myself how fast your life can unravel if you make a few bad decisions. Coincidentally, today is the 20th anniversary of Requiem, and you can watch an interview with the cast.
#6 Psycho
Black people don’t like water. Maybe events like those in #2 have something to do with it. In the United States, 64% of black children can’t swim, and they are 3x more likely to drown than white children their same age. So the idea of being stabbed, naked, around water, just doesn’t vibe with black people.
The legendary shower scene with the blood-curdling scream of Janet Leigh is still something of a cultural phenomenon today. We can all picture the deranged look on the face of the knife-wielding Norman Bates as he ripped open the curtain in the shower. It’s the ultimate physical threat and most invasive fear. Hitchcock created Psycho with tact, grace, and art, and raised the bar for modern horror.
#7 King Kong
King Kong has some really ugly, racist, ridiculous undertones that make it a scary movie to watch once you get older. The first Kong movie was in 1933 and from its inception, has always been loaded with subplots of wealthy and articulate white men protecting a white woman from a giant, black, savage creature in the jungle. This movie is hard to watch for black people, regardless of the cinematic effects.
In 2009, King Kong opened on Broadway and cast Christiani Pitts as the first black woman in history to play Ann Darrow, the damsel in distress who gets carted off by a gorilla onto the top of the Empire State Building. This article talks about some of the ways we can fix the racist stereotypes that have infected the King Kong franchise for nearly 100 years. It’s time to rethink this movie and its message entirely.
#8 The Blair Witch Project
As a kid growing up in Columbus, Ohio, I tried watching The Blair Witch Project with my friends in the woods of our backyard. We didn’t make it 30 minutes with all the weird noises outside, so we ended up sleeping in our living room. This movie made over $248 million in revenue with a budget of sixty-thousand dollars.
So why do the woods creep out black people so much? For starters, witches. But a larger reason is that camping was never fully accessible to black people in the United States for most of our country’s history. In 1945, Interior Secretary Harold Ickes finally helped desegregate the national parks to make them inclusive to blacks. Until then, blacks just weren’t allowed to camp in all the same places as whites, thanks to Jim Crow laws that passed rights to the states in the National Park Service Act. For most of the South, this just meant white camping only.
#9 Paranormal Activity
The Paranormal Activity franchise profited nicely off their low-budget psycho-thrillers with a similar strategy to that of The Blair With Project. They had the unique idea of showing a first-hand “we found this footage” POV of couples watching video footage of the previous night’s events from different perspectives around the house. Similar to Us, this movie pokes at the frightening idea of seeing your body and your own conciseness separated, which is the essence of death.
The Paranormal Activity formula works on black folks. Our typical instincts to say “nope” and run or fight doesn’t work when you’re watching something that already happened, and it’s too tempting not to look. Expect these movies to make a comeback in a slightly different form.
Conclusion
The point of this article isn’t to write about scary movies. Black people don’t like anything that reminds them of current or past struggles in America. To fix this, we need to push Hollywood to include more people of color, women, LGBTQ, and other people of diverse backgrounds in leading roles in film and theatre to push the boundaries of our civilization and open a world of untapped potential in the arts.
The times are changing. In 2016, the Mexican director Alejandro G. Iñárritu won best director for The Revenant. In 2017, DC Comics broke box office records with Wonder Woman. In 2017, Moonlight won best picture with a gay black lead. In 2018, Marvel profited $100M on the first black Spiderman. In 2018, Marvel broke global box office records with Black Panther. In 2019, Jordan Peele’s Us was regarded as one of the best horror films of all time. Also in 2019, the South Korean film Parasite won Best Picture. In each of these films, some producer, director, playwright, casting director, lighting or sound director, or any other critical decision-maker along the chain of command had the guts to take a risk on someone, and it will pay off for generations.