When Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror was first released on Shudder back in 2019, critics and audiences alike hailed the documentary as a scathing, stylish exorcism of Hollywood’s skeletons. Now, six years later, the film has proven to be the blueprint for horror documentaries that followed, and has evolved into a paramount resource of film history. Inspired by Robin R. Means Coleman’s crucial book Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films From the 1890s to the Present, the film dares to interrogate a genre that so many people love, but one that doesn’t always love its fans back with the same level of respect or appreciation. Director Xavier Burgin attempts a balancing act of academic analysis, unfiltered obsession, and thoughtful, necessary cultural critique in its 83-minute runtime.
Bookended by Jordan Peele’s Get Out — his groundbreaking horror film that made him the first Black person to win the Academy Award for Best Screenwriter — Horror Noire explicitly examines the relationship between art imitating life imitating art, dating back to the reprehensibly racist The Birth of a Nation from 1915. The talking heads selected cover all of the bases — with authors, filmmakers, actors, scholars (among them the doc's creator, producer and co-writer Ashlee Blackwell) and fans all contributing their voices to track a timeline of not just horror, but history, because as author Tananarive Due so rightfully explains, “Black history is Black horror.”
Horror Noire is not a paint-by-numbers history lesson, but an informative and provocative deconstruction of the way the horror genre has been used as an outlet for creative expression to showcase representation, tackle themes of violence, inequality, and racism, celebrate Black joy, as well as expose the implicit biases of white filmmakers. Rather than exclusively feature solo talking head interviews interspersed with movie clips, Burgin wisely pairs up many contributors in a movie theater to have discussions together, which brings a liveliness to the conversation and allows the audience to feel as if they’re gaining an education by overhearing, rather than sitting through an academic lecture.
It also adds a gravity to the topics that are toughest to reckon with, thanks to the fearlessness of their voices, knowing that on this independently produced project, no one has to consider appeasing the predominantly white institutions of a Hollywood production. Keith David and Ken Foree’s banter about the industry is worth the viewing alone, as is watching Rachel True fluctuate between thirsting over Blacula and recounting the moment she realized her presence in The Craft would be impactful to other young Black women.
Every horror fan knows that the genre is typically viewed as “lowbrow” (itself a classification rooted in the discredited, racist pseudoscience of phrenology) by the general film community, but Horror Noire is proof-positive of the genre’s historical significance in the greater landscape of American culture. Horror films consistently reflect the cultural anxieties of a time and society, and the candid testament of how America’s history of white supremacy has sullied the perception of an entire race of people is unflinching. To Black audiences, nothing Horror Noire says is anything new, but for white audiences, it should fundamentally change how we watch and understand the genre.
White audiences were too busy having their minds blown by “zombies as metaphors for consumerism” to recognize that for Black audiences, the monster was already America itself. To understand Black horror cinema is to understand that the scariest part of George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead was that Ben survived the zombie apocalypse only to be shot by an armed militia, that Candyman is a tragedy about racial injustice and social inequity, and that Jordan Peele didn’t invent “woke horror,” he just brought it to the mainstream.
It’s important to remember, though, that Horror Noire is just the start of the conversation. It’s only been six years since the film was released, and so much has changed in not only our world but in the world of horror. At the end of the documentary, many of the contributors discuss their optimistic hopes for the future of Black horror, and despite the egregious rise in fascism that continues to plague all Americans (whether they believe it will impact them or not), there is joy to be found in being able to say, definitively, that they were right.
Nia DaCosta would remake Candyman and later go on to direct The Marvels, becoming the highest-grossing Black woman director in history. Tim Story, Tracy Oliver, and Dewayne Perkins' The Blackening skewered all of the tropes discussed in this documentary and transformed them into one of the funniest horror comedies of recent memory. Jordan Peele would go on to release both Us and Nope to nearly universal praise, and they were box office smash-hits. And of course, there’s Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, the highest-grossing original film in 15 years.
There are so many horror documentaries (many of them also available to stream on Shudder) that focus on overlooked chapters of horror history, but few have been as accessible or endlessly rewatchable as Horror Noire. For horror fans (especially white ones), this isn’t extra credit — this is required viewing. If horror is about facing uncomfortable truths, then it’s time to sit back, listen, and learn.
(Disclosure: Horror Noire was co-prodcued by FANGORIA editor-in-chief Phil Nobile Jr. in 2018.)
