Janelle Monáe stars in Antebellum directed by Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz. The duo directs a horror/ thriller centring around a modern day black woman who finds herself trapped on a 19th century Southern slave plantation. Now I have to say I loved this film, thought it was a very original concept, the cinematography is amazing it and had one of the twistiest twists I’ve seen in a long time (Obviously not gonna spoil such a new film). But as much as I enjoyed it for its originality, it does feel a tad under developed on pretty much everything. Monáe is a pretty seasoned actress but doesn’t have much to work with, in the role of academic Veronica. There’s some needless scenes inserted into the film seemingly for the trailer teases and every character could be fleshed out ten times more. Antebellum lacks a clear message, it’s so unsure of what wants to say or why it’s saying it which is probably the most disappointing thing of all. It’s a film with massive potential but lacking the directors to see it through. But hey that being said I found it intriguing and a great addition to the genre.
Tag: horrormovies
31 Days of Black Horror: Transfiguration, 2016
Michael O’Shea directs this chilling, coming of age drama about two alienated kids living in the New York projects, with a shared bond of vampires and horror films. The film follows troubled teenager, Milo ( Eric Ruffin), who is prone to violent outbursts and ritually kills people and sucks their blood, until his stomach turns on him. Guess little kids shouldn’t drink blood, who knew. Milo’s obsession with vampires and blood manifests from childhood trauma, as Milo wraps his murderous tendencies in the vampire myth to set himself apart from the thugs who stalk his building and their own form of violence. The vampire fascination acts as a form of escapism from his life of neglect in the projects. Milo’s blood obsession gets thrown into chaos with the introduction of fellow loner, Sophie (Chloe Levine) who stirs something new within him ,love. The Transfiguration is a tender and tragic love story, combing the vampire elements of Let the Right One In with the emotional impact of Moonlight.
31 Days of Black Horror: Dr Black & Mr Hyde, 1976.
William Crain directs another famous work of literature, with a very very loose adaptation of the Jekyll and Hyde story. Dr. Henry Pride (Bernie Casey) is a doctor working on a cure to reverse long term liver damage with the regeneration of cells. Shock horror things do not go as planned, and Henry gets bitten by a lab rat testing out his serum which has a ghastly effect on him – turning him into a white monster. Henry also volunteers at the free clinic which also doubles as a thrift shop? Here he treats prostitutes, sure where else will we get the needless nude scenes that last ages? One of his regulars/ love interest, Linda (Marie O’Henry), cites how Pride only volunteers here to clear his conscience by helping out the black community once a week. A community which he seems to separate himself from. Linda draws attention to how he’s a black man pretending to be white in a white world and how he probably drives a white car (which is later revealed to be true).
It is at the clinic where where he gets the unethical idea to trial his experimental drug on sex workers. So, the film basically follows him in his quest to try this drug on pimps and prostitutes whether they agree to it or not until he’s taken down by the police. It’s a strange film altogether with one of the misleading titles ever. The title’s ‘Dr.Black’ never appears, once Pride injects himself with the serum his inner dualism splits into two people. His evil persona turns his skin white, his hair and eyes lighten, and he becomes the monster the black community have been criticising him for appropriating, the white man. Other blaxploitation films usually present the monster as a black avenger and as a figure who represents black pride or resilience, but here it is more complicated as Henry turns into an evil white monster who is hellbent on to help cleaning up the issues within his community but actually is just trying to get rid of the black lower class thus presenting himself as a controversial figure in black horror. Overall, this is a goofy film that takes itself way too seriously and has a serious pacing problem. The plot is just downright ridiculous and the whole thing just veers off into ripping off King Kong by the end. Not a patch on Crain’s previous smash hit, Blacula.
31 Days of Black Horror: Sweetheart, 2019
“For a lot of my life, I’ve struggled with being believed. The truth doesn’t always come with a receipt. Sometimes all we have is our word.”
– Jenn
J.D. Dillard directs this creature feature / survival film that centres around a lone survivor, Jenn (Kiersey Clemons), who washes ashore on a small island after her boat sinks during a storm. Over the next few days, Jenn discovers the graves of people who have previously visited the island and quickly realises that she is not alone here, as a creature surfaces every night from the ocean to feed. What follows is a nightly game of cat and mouse as Jenn must use her wits to survive and escape the island and this deadly creature. Sweetheart is an extremely lean and mean film, clocking in at around 82 minutes total but packs a decent punch. Sweetheart just jumps straight into Jenn washing ashore and adapting to island life, there’s not a minute wasted here.The film is short and simple, operating mostly with a single character in a single location set up but manages to keep your attention throughout even though this is a castaway type story with little dialogue. This is a film that has a limited budget but never feels as such, the creature design isn’t the best but Dillard operates with the ‘Jaws effect’, by only giving the audience a glimpse of the creature during the first half of the film for maximum effect, one scene in particular where Jenn’s uses a flare gun at night which perfectly outlines the creature rising from the water in a deep crimson. Clemons does a great job carrying the film alone for the most part and is a great example of a resilient, black final girl who utilises all she can in order to survive.
31 Days of Black Horror: Burning Sands, 2017
“It’s easier to build strong children than fix broken men
-Frederick Douglass
While Gerard McMurry’s first film, Burning Sands, is technically classified as a drama, McMurray certainly proves that he has some serious horror chops with this terrifying glimpse into the horror of college hazing. Set in Frederick Douglass University, an historically black college, the film follows a group of male freshmen who are trying to pledge themselves to the fraternity house, Lambda Lambda Phi. All five men must undergo the ruthless hazing process in order to prove themselves worthy of a coveted spot in the ‘brotherhood’. Ah toxic masculinity the greatest monster of all. Zurich (Trevor Jackson) a bright student who for some reason, maybe down to his own father not joining the fraternity while he was a student, is desperate to drop everything in his life in order to join LLP including his girlfriend and studies. Zurich and his fellow pledges must survive ‘hell week’, a tradition that subjects newcomers to severe beatings and humiliation. Things go from bad to a complete shit show when the sadistic frat boys take it too far and things quickly spiral out of control. Burning Sands is a masterclass in dread, as each scene oozes with the possibility that anything could just combust at any second and renders its audience completely shell shocked by its conclusion.
The brutal hazing of the new pledges resembles a form of slavery, the irony of it all is that this brutality is occurring within the Frederick Douglass University, the namesake of legendary abolitionist and a site of black cultural and intellectual freedom .The desperate need for acceptance within this ‘brotherhood’ in exchange for essentially one’s freedom and individualism is a worrisome concept especially in a college environment when students are out in the world discovering themselves and dipping their toes into adulthood. It is a harrowing sight seeing these five young men go through countless beatings and humiliation to join a frat house with such disregard for their own bodies. Each man has his own reasons for joining of course but at its core they seek to be accepted by other men and crave the opportunities that aligning oneself to more powerful men can provide while either in college or in the future. The desire to be part of something important drives these young men to accept repeated forms of dehumanisation, simply because the fear of being called “not a real man” is far more dangerous and harmful than any broken bone could ever be . The real terror here is the lengths that these young men will go to in order to prove their masculinity. And for that reason alone, Burning Sands is definitely the scariest film on the list so far.
31 Days of Black Horror: Tales from the Hood, 1995
But you are responsible for the lives you’ve taken… for the dreams you’ve turned into nightmares.
– Dr.Cushing
Rusty Cundieff’s, Tales from the Hood, is an iconic urban anthology series from the mid 1990’s that is still as sharp and current as ever. Broken down into four short stories where the themes deal with issues that affect the black community. The stories are framed by a creepy albeit chatty funeral director, Mr. Simms (Clarence Williams III), who chats away to a trio of drug dealers looking for drugs at the funeral home. Simms chats away to them, explaining the stories behind the bodies in each coffin.
The different segments detail real life issues that affect the community against the backdrop of horror and biting humour, such as police brutality, domestic abuse, institutional racism, and gang violence, respectively. My favourite tale being the third segment which centres around a racist Southern governor/ former Klansman, who has taken up residency in a former plantation house, a site of countless atrocities against slaves. The souls of these slaves were placed in little dolls by a voodoo queen, where they ‘awaken’ when the ignorant, racist governor moves in to seek their bloody revenge. This segment has some impressive scenes with stop motion animation and filled with powerful imagery reflecting the racist history of America then and highlights that not a lot has changed now. Tales from the Hood is one of the strongest horror anthologies, mainly due to having the one director with a singular vision. Every segment has great performances, each one well written with sharp social commentary that maintains terrific pacing throughout. Unlike other anthologies there is no ‘bad or boring episode’ each one is just as good, important and relevant today as it was in 1995 which I guess is the real horror of these stories, the cyclic nature of these issues. But hopefully in the future we can all break the chain and choose when this nightmare ends? Who knows it’s Sunday I’m feeling optimistic.
31 Days of Black Horror: Black Box, 2020
Black Box directed by Emmanuel Osei-Kuffour is a sci-fi/ horror, released as part of ‘The Welcome to Blumhouse’, 8 film deal on Amazon Prime. Black Box centres around a recently widowed father, Nolan (Mamoudou Athie), who is struggling to raise his young daughter, Ava (Amanda Christine) after losing both his wife and his memory in a car accident. After months of frustration, Nolan seeks out an experimental treatment from neurologist, Dr. Lillian Brookes (Phylicia Rashad). Nolan begins to remember fragments of his past but it’s a past that does not line up to what his friends and family have told him. He begins to question himself and the man he is/ who he was before his accident while digging further and further into his dark subconsciousness. Black Box may some obvious comparisons to a great episode of Black Mirror or Jordan Peele’s Get Out, as both visually convey similar sunken places within the Black subconsciousness but Osei-Kuffour is a capable writer/director that can stand on his two feet with this unnerving feature, and one that showcases a promising career in horror with its creepy ass imagery. All the performances here knock it out of the park, but particularly child actor Christine, as Ava brings adds a devastating quality to the film as she tries her best to leave little reminders for her dad and tearfully begs him not to forget her.
Black Box excellently conveys the true terror of what it feels like losing your memory, your mind and what it means to lose a piece of yourself within these lapses. Dr. Brookes’ experimental ‘black box’ is a computer program of the virtual reality-type, that collects and projects core memories into a a patient, forcing Nolan to relearn how to walk in his own shoes, remap memories in a skin that just does not seem to fit, as something feels unfamiliar but also uncanny at the same time. Nolan embarks on a journey to find himself again which leads him down a dark and twisty path. Black Box is a truly terrifying horror dealing with the fallout of head trauma and how this trauma within one’s own mind can manifest into a repressed monster from the depths of a person’s damaged core memories. Which leaves you questioning who or what you are deep down.
31 Days of Black Horror: Eve’s Bayou, 1997
Although lacking in traditional horror and scares, Kasi Lemmon’s directorial debut, Eve’s Bayou is a beautiful Southern Gothic drama that has an air of being eternally haunted. Our narrator, a young girl named Eve (Jurnee Smollett) sets up the narrative with a chilling introduction, “Memory is a selection of images, some elusive, some imprinted indelibly on the brain. The summer I killed my father, I was ten years old”. The film charts the dissolution of Eve’s family life through the eyes of a young child, with elements of magical realism in the form of Eve’s psychic aunt played the captivating Debbi Morgan and a local voodoo witch, Elzora (Diahann Carroll).
The events surrounding the film all take place during a sweltering summer in 1960’s Louisiana. Eve’s family are the ideal picture of a perfect family, to the outside world they are blessed with wealth and own their land, her parents are respected around the community and throw lavish parties. Her father, the local doctor, the charming Louis (Samuel L. Jackson), is celebrated by his neighbours and idolised by his daughters, however Eve’s image of her perfect family is tainted when she discovers that her father is constantly unfaithful to her mother which drives her to wish him dead through voodoo. Turns out dad gets around doing them house calls and he is anything but subtle. The rest of the film deals with how Eve and her relatives deal with the fallout of this reveal and how everyone’s memory reflects a different image of the past to suit what they want to see rather than what happened. Characters constantly try and manipulate Eva’s perception of the past to keep the rose-tinted glasses firmly on for themselves. Emphasising how two sides of the same story can be vastly different in the eye of the beholder, which becomes clearer with the film’s ambiguous ending. Eve’s Bayou is a work similar to that of Faulkner, Harper Lee or Tennessee Williams in how Lemmons’ perfectly captures the stifling atmosphere of the south and how that creates a claustrophobic environment as toxic family secrets spill out in the open air.
31 Days of Black Horror: Candyman, 1992
“I am the writing on the wall, the whisper in the classroom. Without these things, I am nothing. So now, I must shed innocent blood. Come with me.”
– Candyman
Bernard Rose directs a masterful thriller centred around the fear surrounding an urban legend and the effects it has on the community who have created a bogeyman-like entity. Candyman revolves around a young graduate student, Helen Lyle ( Virginia Madsen), researching urban legends for her thesis with particular interest surrounding one local legend about a figure named Candyman, played by the wonderful Tony Todd. The legend states that if his name is said in front of a mirror five times he’ll appear and kill you using his hooked right hand. The legend originates from the Cabrini-Green project, a predominately black neighbourhood that is ravaged by crime and antisocial behaviour. The residents of Cabrini-Green believe the legend to explain away their circumstances in the neighbourhood. Since all the crime that occurs here is placed upon the mysterious Candyman figure leaving the residents to hide in fear, unable to change their fate. The lack of outside help from police and the government further adds to the isolation of the neighbourhood fuelling the legend and the criminals who piggyback off it. Candyman is definitely not without its faults as it involves the depiction of a black serial killer who comes across rather predatory. Candyman’s background reveals he that he was killed by racists around the 1800’s for simply falling in love with a white woman, but when he comes back from the dead he chooses to punish his own people in a housing project rather than, well, actual racists?
This aside the film does draw attention to the systematic racism that occurs around us every day from the top down, the lack of police presence in the projects, how the city just isolates a whole community, essentially abandoning them to a life of crime and even Helen’s unwanted presence in Cabrini in the first place. Helen just glides through the projects shielded with white privilege that aids her the entire film a luxury none of the characters of colour get to enjoy. Candyman is a modern classic, that uses the bases of a ghost story to draw attention to the very real social-economic issues that can plague a community for decades. It also has a wonderful score by Philip Glass and is anchored by a magnificent performance from Todd as the cool as ice entity who haunts the tower block.
31 Days of Black Horror: Vampire in Brooklyn, 1995
Wes Craven directs this updated 90’s Blacula tale with Eddie Murphy in the lead role as Maximilien ‘Max’, a vampire from the Caribbean islands who comes to New York City in search of a mate, in the form of the half human, half vampire Rita (Angela Bassett). Rita is a headstrong cop working on a murder case, mainly down to the arrival of Max, and is unaware of her inner vampiric nature. The film follows Max on his quest to turn her with the help of his ghoul, Julius, played by the hilarious Kadeem Hardison (Def by Temptation). The story is simple enough albeit if it makes zero sense to anyone other than Max and is by far nowhere near Craven’s best work. Angela Bassett kills it as Rita, a curious cop with a question mark over her past. Bassett really is this film’s one saving grace as her character is fully fleshed out, realised female lead that ends up saving herself rather than waiting around for her passive, hollowed out love interest, Detective Justice, (yes his actual name) played by Allen Payne. Eddie Murphy is basically being Eddie Murphy in various roles which do generate some laughs, particularly him as the white Italian gangster but he has seen better roles. Vampire in Brooklyn is a little anaemic on horror or comedy and doesn’t really add to or update the vampire horror but one that doesn’t use up too much brain power in the process so perfect for a lazy Sunday like today.
FILM FIEND 