Editorials
What Does Modern Black Horror Say About The 2020s?
Black horror is still a relatively new genre. Its earliest films date back to 1941, but its presence weakened over two decades until Duane Jones’ debut in 1968. The spurts of Black horror through cinema history can be marked by turning points in Black history. The Night of the Living Dead translated a collective tension in the same way that Jordan Peele’s Get Out did for Black audiences in 2017. In those fifty years between two Black horror pillars, equality became an illusion. I thought about this at the turn of the New Year, with Sinners in my top watches from 2025. It wasn’t the only Black horror film to be released, but Ryan Coogler made the Black horror film to mark a new era.
From Blaxploitation to Social Horror
Where blaxploitation films were a response to the cultural momentum of Black activism, the Black horror films that were released at the end of the 2010s sought to wake the collective. We weren’t dealing with the aftershocks of Jim Crow anymore. Racism could show up with a smile and freshly baked pie, like in Peele’s directorial debut. And because horror gives us the space we need to process the discomfort brought on by neoliberal microaggressions, a movie like Get Out redirects dialogue that was once misunderstood or minimized.
Horror is intended to be traumatic, as Professor Kinitra Brooks once explained in a 2023 article. This genre “leads us to these deeper questions of who do we fear and are we fearing the right people?” Her examples included Candyman (1992): a character whose Blackness was mistaken for monstrous. These are the side effects of navigating our identities in a white world (and through a white lens). Now that Black voices are taking the stand, though, I’m finding a catharsis that wasn’t present before. Maybe, with the exception of The People Under the Stairs in the 80s. It’s what I believe to be driving our current decade of Black horror.
Black Horror Films of the 2020s and Collective Agency
The movies of the 2020’s acknowledge the systemic racism that has the power to oppress the Black community without disregarding our agency as individuals and a group. These newer narratives lend a focal lens to communal values of heritage as a means of strength. Ones like The Blackening and Night Patrol sought to re-imagine popular horror tropes with culture, while others like They Cloned Tyrone and HIM brought something original to the plate. I found hope in each one, and the conversations I’ve seen surrounding these flicks tell me that I’m not alone in this.
The internet has poked fun at the similarities between 2016 and 2026, but our reality verifies the basis of that trend. Matters are worse now, though. So, it doesn’t come as a surprise that the films growing the Black horror genre have an uplifting spirit to them. In a time of crisis, we look for ways to exorcise our anxiety. Tananarive Due phrases it, “to seek out survival behaviors in crisis.” How she describes the power of Black horror in this Uncanny Magazine article from 2019 and the liberty of “walking away unscathed” is the epitome of what brings me back to the theater for every modern Black horror movie. Whether it’s a personification of racism or cults preying on Black men, watching Black characters fight back against the monstrous makes our current fears feel manageable, even if for a few hours.
Vampires vs. the Bronx (2020)
Vampires and Gentrification in Modern Black Horror
Within the last five years, we’ve gotten three creature features that remove us from the antagonistic nature of older Black horror films. Vampires are becoming a Black horror trope in their own regard. Vampires vs. the Bronx, directed by Oz Rodriguez, marked the start of this decade in 2020 with a comedic take on vampires as a vehicle for its central theme of gentrification. This horror archetype has long been an allegory for predation and parasitism, but not really in the context of culture, the way that we’ve seen in the 2020s. Rodriguez turned the traditional vampire into a pilates transplant from Michigan, but Ryan Coogler made colonial vultures out of his vampires. They exist in different timelines yet share the same objective: co-opt the culture. If there’s any evidence of the way this horror sub-genre is evolving within our current decade, Night Patrol can be the exhibit A.
Night Patrol and Systemic Violence as Horror
Ryan Prows welcomed 2026 with his directorial debut featuring a gang of vampires masked behind their LAPD badges. Rather than targeting our culture à la Remmick, these bloodsuckers manipulate the weak joints of the community: gang activity. Rooted in factual context from the Rampart scandal of the late 90s, they exacerbate the intercommunal conflict to spark more violence that, then, gave them a “justified” excuse for dropping Black bodies. The night patrol sucks the life force from the community by way of killing community members and letting the blame fall on the rivaling gangs.
Community Unity as Resistance in Black Horror
Jermaine Fowler’s character, Carr, is caught in the middle of the two worlds as a cop aspiring to be a part of the night patrol. He exists as a fable for those who turn their back on their community in pursuit of white approval. Many Black police officers will say they joined the force to make a difference. Carr learns, all too late, that a single man cannot dismantle centuries of corruption. His younger brother Wazzi is the real hero of the story, but he couldn’t have done it without the compromise between the Crips and Bloods. There have been a few times, in our own timeline, where these rivaling gangs put their differences aside to combat their shared enemy. As the great Alexandre Dumas said, “united we stand, divided we fall.”
Before the grand finale of Night Patrol, Freddie Gibbs says, “Some things are bigger than this gang shit,” and that’s the commonality in these recent ensemble films. Insulation and ego have no room at the table when we need to fend for each other.
HIM (2025)
HIM and the Horror of Individual Exploitation
So, what can be said for films like HIM, where the monstrous is zeroed in on a singular character? This movie didn’t reach the box-office success that other Black horror films from last year did. However, it still has substance to offer to the conversation. Justin Tipping tapped into a conversation that had been only a whisper amongst the Black community, and it proved to be one hard pill to swallow. Get Out examined the commodification of Black bodies, and Tipping said, “Let’s unpack that further.” The story sprouts from the experience of transitioning from college football to the professional league. And what’s revealed is the grooming nature of young athletes to be the next “goat”.
Black Identity and the Faustian Bargain
Any man of any race could’ve played Cameron Cade if that’s what this film was about. Going back to Due’s article, she explained, “The simple appearance of black characters in horror is still noteworthy, evoking societal advancement at times, or societal pathologies at other times.” Because Isaiah White and Cameron Cade are both Black men in the world of football, HIM identifies the Black experience within a niche culture rooted in colonial violence. What I find interesting about White’s character (played by Marlon Wayans) is how he teeters on the line of right and wrong because of his own tragedy.
As a Black man in the league, and in the same position that Cam is vying for, he heeds warnings in subtle ways about finding your own footing independent of those who pretend to have your best interest in mind. Isaiah is on the white man’s bankroll, though, at the end of the day. Just like Stack and Cornbread in Sinners, he will lure Cam to his demise if it means a better (and longer) life for himself.
This Black Faustian bargain highlights the strength of our individual agency in the face of an institution that only sees us for parts and profit. Cam realized that his lifelong dream had been a disillusionment, the same way we’ve come to realize that about our freedoms as Black Americans. Our approval rates for mortgages are lower due to racial bias, Black individuals are incarcerated at higher rates than our counterparts, and artificial intelligence is being trained with the same biases that have gotten people in our community murdered. Would you sacrifice the autonomy that you do have for the promise of a life free of oppression? Cam didn’t. And that ending couldn’t have been more satisfying.
Sovereignty as the Defining Theme of Modern Black Horror
If I had to describe this decade of horror in one word, it would be “sovereign.” It’s assumed, by our modern auteurs, that we’re educated on the matters of the 2010s. We’ve been awoken, and the only way to go is up. These films inspire upheaval within ourselves and our community. Now that we’re no longer dying first in the name of the outdated Black trope, we can examine our own fears, our place in our community, and how our individual sovereignty can inspire the collective. When ICE is kidnapping our Black neighbors, will we fall victim to the propaganda like Remmick’s followers did? Or will we find motivation in each other to dominate the ascendancy?
Sometimes it feels borderline ridiculous to gush about John Carpenter’s The Thing as much as I do. It’s gotten to the point where when I’m asked about my favorite horror film by both friends and strangers, a little bit of embarrassment tinges my expression as I answer; it feels so obvious and rarely surprises anyone. Saying I love The Thing when people expect me to bust out an obscure foreign horror film or a cerebral thriller makes me feel like a rosy cheeked child with a propeller hat and a giant lollipop. “Wow, you love one of the most popular horror films of all time, congrats!”
But it’s just the truth. The first film of John Carpenter’s “Apocalypse Trilogy”, all three of its films are among my favorites. But The Thing has a special place in my heart. It shaped my taste in horror, my taste in most media in general, to be honest. It’s become the gold standard, 10/10 baseline test for the vast majority of my reviews; it is a perfect film, so I judge other films against it. And it’s one of the few movies I have to run back to and watch yearly like clockwork (usually when I’m spending a part of winter tied to the couch). It is, in all regards, the perfect film. If it isn’t the perfect film, then it is at the very least the perfect sci-fi horror film.
So, what exactly qualifies The Thing for literal perfection? It’s a high bar to clear. This article, as informal as it is compared to most of my editorials, is an attempt to explain it.
Even if Carpenter Isn’t the Goat, His Team for The Thing Was
As far as crews go, John Carpenter’s The Thing had the cinematic equivalent of the ’96 Chicago Bulls behind it. We’re talking about an amalgam of some of the most talented people to ever grace the silver screens with their work, boasting alongside John Carpenter two of the heaviest hitters in all of cinematic history: Dean Cundey, and Rob Bottin. Now, we can debate all day about whether John Carpenter is the greatest of all time when it comes to horror directors. Personally, I’m just as liable to say Cronenberg, Del Toro, or Hooper as I am to say Carpenter.
But the key factor to remember here is that Carpenter is the coach, not the star player; the Phil Jackson, if you will. Yes, he is the visionary who directed a near perfect cast of players and composed a tale of pure, apocalyptic paranoia. More importantly, he put together and coordinated the team that would make his vision manifest as reality. And if Carpenter is Phil Jackson, Rob Bottin is the team’s Michael Jordan here, the greatest of all time.
(And to all my Lebron fans, I love you, but you have to sit down for this analogy.)
The Legend of Rob Bottin
Bottin’s story is borderline unbelievable, but it’s the best way to explain how abnormally skilled he is and what he brought to the table for Carpenter. At age 14, Bottin became an apprentice to the at-the-time GOAT Rick Baker after sending him a letter seeking an autograph while sharing his creature designs. He was a quick study under Baker, joining him on the ’76 King Kong and Star Wars, before bouncing to Carpenter’s The Fog and then iconic werewolf picture The Howling.
When he reunited with Carpenter in 1982, he now had 6 classic films under his belt and was moving like an FX bullet train. From ages 22 to 23, he worked on The Thing for 57 weeks in both pre-production and on set. Nearly 24/7 for 400 days, Bottin’s all-gas no-brakes work ethic made The Thing at the cost of his own health, and it resulted in him being hospitalized with pneumonia. He survived and went on to make Robocop. And at least one of your favorite films.
Because no conventional disease or weaponry can kill Rob Bottin.
The Thing Still Features Horror’s Best Practical Effects
Okay, that last bit might be hyperbolic, but the man sincerely put his life on the line to make special effects that haven’t been topped since. Not the best effects in just horror history, or science fiction history, but effects that haven’t been topped in any genre for over 44 years. Not by his mentor Rick Baker, not by Screaming Mad George, not by Alec Gillis (though shoutout to him for his criminally scrapped work on The Thing (2011), and even more criminally ignored work on Harbinger Down). I love Dawn of the Dead, believe me, I do, but he certainly isn’t being beaten out by Tom Savini’s body of work. And that isn’t to disrespect and say that all of the artists that I just mentioned are bad, they’re the best in the game! But Rob Bottin was just that much better.
This inevitably invites the counterpoint: “But it wasn’t just Bottin! Stan Winston and his people were the ones who worked on the Dog Thing to give Bottin’s crew a break, and that’s the best monster in the movie!”. To which I say: look me in the eye and tell me the Dog Thing sequence is better than the Palmer Thing sequence. That’s not even counting the Norwegian Thing, both Norris Things, and the absolutely masterful final creature work that was the Blair Thing. The only reason Bottin and his people didn’t win Academy Awards for their work was because they got jumped by E.T., The Dark Crystal, Conan the Barbarian, and Blade Runner all at the same time at the Oscars. It’s just a consequence of being released during the best year for movies ever.
Okay, Now We Can Talk About Dean Cundey
But of course, these effects are then supported by another true legend: Dean Cundey. Selling people on Rob Bottin being the greatest effects artist of all time, isn’t nearly as difficult as advocating for Cundey, who despite an impressive catalog of filmography, slowed down in the back half of his career. He’s often overshadowed in conversations when it comes to The Thing; it’s always talk of Carpenter’s directing, Bottin’s effects, and Ennio Morricone’s incredible soundtrack up front, and rarely any of Cundey’s work. He isn’t spoken about in the same breath as John Alcott or Michael Ballhaus, cinematographers whose work is associated with prestigious cinema because of their proximity to great directors.
Cundey might not be the director of photography your Martin Scorsese’s or Paul Thomas Anderson’s went running to, but I would be lying if I said I didn’t think he was the most important cinematographer in horror history, just for his work with Carpenter and Spielberg. He helmed three of the most influential films in all of horror with his lighting and camera operating: The Thing, Halloween, and Jurassic Park. The man’s fingerprints are automatically on the cultural DNA of all slashers, most practical effects-driven horror films, and the biggest gateway horror franchise in film history.
The Dream Team That Made The Thing Perfection
Cundey has gone on record saying that despite Carpenter’s input, he was effectively given free rein to light and frame The Thing. The man didn’t just know how to shoot effects to make them evoke true disgust from the audience, he was able to manipulate every aspect of the shot to terrify. His sixth sense cinematography wasn’t just for lighting and playing with shadows, but for the speed of camera movement, the power of his blocking, and for having a complete grasp of communicating texture and temperature.
And temperature is the soul of The Thing. John J. Lloyd’s production design of the research station and the great white expanse around it feels just as bone chilling as the film’s antagonist, thanks to Cundey. There isn’t a single flat shot in the thing, not a moment that doesn’t feel dynamic, and it’s because of Dean Cundey.
Now, all this being said about Bottin and Cundey, they are far from the only ones who synthesized this structurally perfect organism of a movie. Every bit of Todd C. Ramsay’s editing splices the film’s scenes together to move perfectly in-time. David Lewis Yewdall’s sound design and how it gave a voice to the horrors on screen will be etched into people’s brains forever. The point is that everyone, every single person who had a hand in making the film, helped make the movie flawless.
Like the cells of the thing from another world, each crew member on John Carpenter’s The Thing moved in concert with the next, in unison, to create the greatest sci-fi horror of all time. So, is it any wonder why 40 some years later, the film still has us all captured?
Can you believe Cronenberg, Spielberg, and Rodriguez all knew I was gay before I did? Leave it to a screening of The Fly to instantly deposit me in the men’s underwear aisle of the Woodbridge Center Sears, circa 2001. The bulges on the packaging glare at me so obscenely that I begin to sweat. I realize something is amiss as the Geena Davis of Human Resources watches me from security cameras, probably. Puberty is a horror for anyone – for those of the non-hetero persuasion, it’s a nightmare. None of us asked for this, but I certainly didn’t ask for THIS.
Years later, after crystallizing into some semblance of my true form at the ripe age of 37, something became clear. Sci-fi horror is the gateway drug for us queer kids. Hiding, passing, transforming, and, eventually, saying, “fuck it.” It’s all kinda gay, even if David, Steven, and Robert didn’t get the memo.
The Fly and the Horror of Queer Self-Realization
So when Cronenberg’s The Fly buzzes across my screen, and I watch Seth Brundle throw a distressed and devastatingly chic Geena Davis out of his apartment because something’s very wrong, it hits different. When Brundle rushes toward his private horror in the bathroom, unconsciously squirting a viscous fluid at the mirror while molting skin and nail, it feels different. And finally, when he reaches for his computer and learns that his body has fused with a fly – a foreign body – at the molecular level, it hurts different. That undeniable realization that you can no longer explain away, before you’re really ready to admit it to yourself. Sugar in the tank? No, there’s a fly in the chamber.
E.T. and the Fear of Keeping Secrets at Home
And now we’re home from Sears, and the Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 5 finale is on. She dies (spoiler alert). I, a 12-year-old boy, am sobbing. My mom is right there. Can’t I enjoy my little gay show without giving myself a scarlet letter (F) in my own home? Which brings us back to Spielberg and his 1982 harrowing domestic thriller about a boy and a thing he cannot name, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Through harboring a cosmic fugitive, home simultaneously becomes the safest and most dangerous place for young Elliott and his siblings. Managing emotions and secrets behind a white picket fence is not something adolescents should be expected to handle, and yet here we are.
As if that isn’t gay enough, Spielberg also snuck a drag show into his family film – and in this culturally regressive Trumpian era of pearl-clutching, that feels like quite the treat. After all, it was baby Drew Barrymore dressing up that stumpy alien in a blonde shake-and-go wig and thrift store dress that inspired my illustrious drag career as Ellie I.T.
The Faculty’s Assimilation Anxiety and Queer Identity
At least E.T. only had to hide in a single house. The broom closet expands into a walk-in as life continues, and I was desperate to keep it made of anything but glass. Robert Rodriguez’s The Faculty understands this. As an alien invasion slowly subsumes Herrington High into a unified collective, the school’s uninfected archetypes resist assimilation through performative normalcy. Is it any wonder so many male actors are gay? They’ve been method-acting a straight existence since childhood.
And yet, in retrospect, the film ends with a slap in the face to queer viewers. It spends 104 minutes terrifying you with the prospect of everyone becoming an NPC. The reward for saving the world? Its heroes receive heteronormative skill-tree upgrades disguised as class promotions. For fucks sake, then-closeted lesbian royalty Clea DuVall plays a character who fakes being gay to dodge male advances, only to end up with the school jock! The aliens lost. The status quo won. I remain in the closet.
Species, Annihilation, and Embracing Transformation
Eventually, the closet door opens, as they tend to do. College happens, a boyfriend happens, a breakup happens, and suddenly I’m without a map. There’s no fairy godfather to light the way, and just like the alien hybrid Sil in the deliriously erotic Species, I’m a creature out of containment in a world that was built for someone else – namely, straight people.
After a few years of blade running through an identity crisis, it’s the summer of 2014. Lana Del Rey’s Ultraviolence is the soundtrack of my life. I float in a pool, sipping tequila from a glass flamingo as she croons about toxic romance and self-destruction. It’s somehow both directionless and transformative, like I’m drifting through the otherworldly Shimmer in Alex Garland’s Annihilation.
The Shimmer – an expanding prism-like zone brought to Earth by a meteorite – refracts the DNA of everything it touches. A beguiling phenomenon, it shapes a new world of monsters, magic, and everything in between. That’s exactly what life does to us, if given the chance. Like Josie in Garland’s film, I chose to embrace this chaos rather than fight a war against whatever I was becoming. It was the dissolution of self-discovery. I was ready to just be.
From Alien Outsiders to Algorithmic Stereotypes
Over time, I’ve found that social hierarchy has changed in recent years. Still, we’re unconsciously sorted into neat little boxes based on what our doomscrolling algorithms decide we are. The popular gays shart out group speedo selfies like the plague, theater kids have become polyamorous Letterboxd elites, apple-picking queers are living their best lives on Wisteria Lane, and the gym bros…so many gym bros – go on girl, give us nothing! Digitally prescribed identities are the new sci-fi horror. It’s The Faculty for faggots.
Harsh, I know, but people can do what they want. Instead, I decided to move like Iris, the AI-powered pleasure bot who overrides her programming in Drew Hancock’s Companion. The same Drew Hancock who, in an ironic twist of fate, is currently writing a remake of The Faculty. After kicking her pathetic “boyfriend’s” ass and swiping her control device, she scurries into the forest and alters her factory settings. She sets her intelligence to a whopping 100% and is no longer burdened by someone else’s template. And as I became more and more disillusioned with the cacophony of cliques around me, I set my unbothered meter to 100% as well. I am free.
Mars Attacks! and the Joy of Living Unapologetically
Freedom, as it turns out, looks a lot like Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks! After surviving Sears, Sunnydale, and the Shimmer, this is the celestial body I’ve crash-landed on. Burton’s Martian menaces are perhaps the most unhinged in all of cinema, and maybe that’s the best planet to subscribe to. They never justified their existence; they cackled and fired a blaster ray from the hip. We waste so much time looking for acceptance and belonging, but maybe we should all just sit back and laugh. I know I am.
