Black Horror Film Characters We Wish Didn't Die In The First 15 Minutes

Martie Bowser
·2 min read
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It’s almost Halloween and the perfect time for horror movies. Although we love to see them, Black characters have not had the best fates in scary movies. As we’ve said before, our Halloween costumes are often more than iconic but sometimes, we don’t get the same reverence in cinema. For a while, the lack of representation in the writer’s room was to blame for the short lives of Black characters, or if there were any Black characters at all.

One of the first Black characters in a mainstream horror film was Duane Jones as Ben in Night of the Living Dead. The zombie movie premiered in 1968. Jones’s character was seen as pretty radical at the time because his character had a white onscreen wife. He survived to the end, only to be shot by a group that mistook him for a zombie.

Throughout the 1970s and 80s, we saw more color on the big screen. The blaxploitation horror film classic, Blacula, and Scatman Crothers’role as Dick Hollorann in The Shinning. One of the most famous Black horror characters is Tony Todd as the eponymous Candyman. Todd’s Candyman character was the Black main character to have a horror trilogy. The remake starred Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and made history again in 2021. The new rendition was directed by Nia Dacosta, making her the first Black female director to debut at no.1 at the box office. On board with DaCosta was Black cinema powerhouse Jordan Peele, who directed Get Out, Us, and his most recent box office hit, Nope.

Although we are glad to see Black people making it to the credits, we can’t forget the characters who may have been thrown on the chopping block a little too early.

Here are a few characters that deserved some more screen time.

Samuel L. Jackson - Deep Blue Sea (1997)

 

In true Jackson fashion, the actor gave one of the best monologues before being eaten alive by a shark.

Omar Epps - Scream 2 (1997)

Poor Epps didn’t even make it to the opening credits.

Jada Pinkett Smith - Scream 2 (1997)

Before making her husband cry on Red Table Talk, Pinkett-Smith met her demise in the first 10 minutes of the slasher classic.

Mekhi Phifer - I Know What You Did Last Summer (1998)

Technically Phifer made it past the 15 minutes but watching his character get yanked by a hook was pretty hard to see.

Meagan Good - One Missed Call (2008)

Good was the first to get snatched up in this thriller about cell phone messages that predicted the fate of the characters.

Honorable Mention: LaKeith Stanfield - Get Out (2018)

Although Stanfield’s character doesn’t die in the movie, he’s undoubtedly not the same Andre when we see him again.

Let us know some of your favorite Black horror characters that made it to see another day.