I feel like at one point, Blackstock Boneyard’s intention was to be taken seriously. Marketed as being "in the tradition of Candyman," it was originally titled Rightful, which sounds like either a Civil Rights Movement period drama or a Kirk Cameron right-to-life wet dream. It’s based on the true...
In the US, Black domestic servitude still conjures antiquated images of Hattie McDaniel and Butterfly McQueen birthin' babies and whatnot, a concept that is, as they say, gone with the wind. In countries like Brazil and South Africa, however, domestic servitude goes hand in hand with Blackness, an ever-present...
The Summoned is well-made but by-the-numbers horror fare that relies on well-worn genre tropes -- the isolated location, the mysterious and most likely malevolent host, the creepy stranger who holds all the secrets, the foreboding dreams, the token black guy -- but for once, the black guy here is...
It will be interesting to see if, in a decade or so, there will have been established a very specific, very limited subgenre of film known as “COVID cinema.” These are not movies about COVID-19, mind you, but rather movies shot in and around the COVID shutdown of 2020-21...
Say what you will about The Asylum -- the poor quality of their films, their willingness to coast off the notoriety of bigger, better movies with “mockbusters” like Snakes on a Train and Independents' Day, the fact that their Sharknado films opened the floodgates for every Tom, Dick and...
We all heard about the strife that COVID-19 caused for Broadway performers who had to put their dreams on hold and find ways to eke out a living that didn’t include in-person song and dance numbers, but less publicized thespian victims during the COVID era were film actors who...
Having been balls deep in black horror for a number of years, it’s always fascinating to come across a film of significance that’s been hidden in plain sight for so long. Nothing about the generically titled Night of the Strangler and its lily white poster screams blackness (and what...
Somewhere within the flaming garbage heap that was 2020, there have been reasons to celebrate: your birthday, for one, and if you’re reading this, the fact that you’re still alive -- and functionally literate. Congratulations! But for the purposes of this site, the ever-growing diversity within the horror genre...
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner meets Rosemary’s Baby in Kindred, a polished, well-acted British thriller whose intriguing potential ultimately devolves into a ball of toothless frustration. The story revolves around Charlotte (Tamara Lawrance), a black woman whose white live-in boyfriend Ben’s (Edward Holcroft) family is a bit...clingy. When he...
A year or so after Attack the Block was released, another British sci-fi horror film with a black protagonist fighting an alien invasion came out -- with less spectacular results. Noel Clarke stars in Storage 24 as Londoner Charlie, who’s down in the dumps after his girlfriend Shelley (Antonia...
