Psycho Killers Prefer Blondes
Note: this article contains spoilers for I Still Know What You Did Last Summer.
They are also partial to brunettes and red heads. Anyone really, as long as you’re not a Black woman.
This is a strange time to be writing this essay, with Black Lives Matter protests happening all over the world and calls for changes in racist systems from government to entertainment and everything in between, and through it all, as ever, Black women are fighting battles on all sides as well as reiterating for the fiftyleventh time that we are valid human beings with opinions, experiences and feelings that matter.
Actually, that makes it the perfect time to write this essay.
Lest you be fooled by the title, I, of course, do not want psycho killers to murder Black women, or any women for that matter, but when it comes to horror films, I would love to see many more Black women, especially in the role of the Final Girl. I want to see them blood soaked, exhausted but ultimately triumphant in their unlikely win against the Bad Guy™.
As an actress, it’s hard not to notice the roles usually reserved for Black women. I, of course, audition a lot for the standard Wife or Girlfriend of Black Man, with little to no inner life of her own, but also the Teacher/Doctor/Lawyer/Soldier/Police Officer, often with an Asian or Latinx girlfriend, which conveniently kills several diversity birds with one lazy stone.
When it comes to horror, the options don’t massively vary. I audition for the friend of the main girl. Literally, that’s mostly it. I re-watched an alarming amount of horror films in research for this, truly alarming, enough to make my parents worry about me, and I couldn’t believe that, in over twenty years and countless attempts to completely subvert horror stereotypes and tropes, filmmakers still mainly cast Black women as the friend. Often, the least interesting friend, to add insult to injury. The friend who looks after the main girl. The sensible one. The one who gives advice (that is ignored) and attempts to protect the main girl at all costs.
I’m reminded of an article written by Nadia and Leila Latif in 2016 for the Guardian about Hollywood’s general race problem. In it, they propose the use of a test which, like the Bechdel test (a feminist test for movies, originally taken from Alison Bechdel’s Dykes to Watch Out For comic strip, asking whether a film has 1) at least two women, who 2) talk about anything other than a man), would determine if non-white characters are adequately represented in film. The test consists of five questions: Are there two named characters of colour? Do they have dialogue? Are they not romantically involved with one another? Do they have any dialogue that isn’t comforting or supporting a white character? Is one of them definitely not magic? These seem like pretty achievable benchmarks, but most mainstream horror films fall short, by which I mean they fail spectacularly.
Let’s go back to the first horror films I remember watching, when the mainstream horror franchises started to really take off and arguably the films that gave birth to the modern-day Final Girl. Films like Scream (1996) and I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) had the same basic set up: a group of teen friends having a carefree, normal time which is ruined by an almost unkillable murderer who is hell bent on dispatching the whole gang, but especially the “girl next door” of the group. The former has no main characters that are non-white at all. The latter has one Black woman (credited as Deb and played by Rasool J’Han) whose only role is to make sure that her college roommate Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt) packs and leaves in time to go home for the summer. Both franchises attempt to rectify their lack of diversity in the next films. Scream 2 (1997) opens with Maureen Evans (Jada Pinkett Smith) and her boyfriend Phil Stevens (Omar Epps) going to the cinema to watch a horror based on the events of the first film (it’s all very meta) and discussing the fact that Black people don’t really appear in horror films. Do you see what they did there? It seems like the filmmakers are self-aware and self-critical, all very clever, that is, until they murder both these characters before the opening credits. But never fear! Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) has a Black best friend in this one. Hallie McDaniel, played by Elise Neal, who spends most of her time following Sidney around, giving Sidney advice and generally filling in plot details for the audience with dialogue that is mostly exposition. Being friends with Sidney obviously puts her in grave danger, but what eventually kills her is Sidney’s insistence that she try and see who the killer is after they’ve knocked him out and narrowly escaped from the back of a police car. Hallie wants to run away, a sensible suggestion some would think, but Sidney insists they go back and, of course, as she sneaks up to the car window to unmask Ghost Face, he’s not there, and she turns around just in time to watch him knife Hallie.
In I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998) we are gifted with Brandy Norwood who plays Karla Wilson, Julie James’ best gal pal. Her biggest personality traits are that she is girlfriend to Tyrell Martin (Mekhi Phifer) and she is apparently desperate for Julie to cheat on her boyfriend with Will (Matthew Settle) - who turns out to be one of the killers FYI. When Karla is not about to have sex with her very persistent boyfriend, she is comforting Julie. Tyrell, unfortunately, goes the way of most Black people in horror and doesn’t make it to the end, but Karla gets over it (almost immediately) and she survives! Although it’s my personal belief that this has little to do with the character herself and more to do with her being played by Brandy.
A lot of films of the same era did a lot worse. Films with big ensemble casts like The Faculty (1998) and The Haunting(1999) had an entirely white main cast. House on Haunted Hill (1999) threw in a little Taye Diggs as a treat, but all the women are white. They even cast Ali Larter and Bridgette Wilson in the film who, at the time, look almost identical, but a singular woman of colour, it seems, would have been a step too far.
We’re nowhere to be seen in the early “friends go to a secluded cabin in the woods for a holiday and get murdered” genre of films. Although I don’t have quite so many qualms about that, because I personally think you’d be hard pressed to find a real life Black person who thinks going to a creepy cabin in the woods just outside of Small Town USA, population: white, would be a good idea for a relaxing break.
One film in particular I have to mention is The Skeleton Key (2005) which is set in New Orleans and is about the use of Hoodoo, and therefore obviously stars Kate Hudson and Gena Rowlands. There are, however, Black women all over this film in smaller roles. They work as doctors and nurses who work with Caroline Ellis (Hudson), they advise and warn Caroline on several different occasions and, of course, they instruct Caroline on Hoodoo practises, with no real questions asked. Caroline’s best friend Jill No Last Name (Joy Bryant) tries especially hard to warn her about the dangers of dabbling in things you don’t understand. Of course, every single warning or piece of advice is completely ignored, and she falls victim to Violet Devereaux (Rowlands), who is actually Mama Cecile (Jeryl Prescott), a Black woman, proficient in Hoodoo and who is temporarily occupying Violet’s body and will soon move into Caroline’s. I won’t even attempt to unpack the idea that one of the main characters is meant to be a Black woman in in a white woman’s body… but Kelli Weston and Anna Bogutskaya do a great job of delving into it in a this podcast episode in Final Girls’ Here Be Witches season.
Modern horrors subvert and twist our expectations when it comes to character and plot. Original stories have made for some enormous hits and instant cult classics. I remember the first time I saw The Descent (2005) and the thrill of watching these six different, smart, strong women fight for their lives and loving every second. I’d never seen anything like it, utterly terrifying, and wall to wall badass women. And while I still enjoy that film to this day, I do find it frustrating that with six women they were all white apart from one Asian character, Juno (Natalie Mendoza), who it turns out is lowkey a minor baddie. Films that followed like Jennifer’s Body (2009), Zombieland (2009), The Cabin in The Woods (2011), It Follows (2014), Happy Death Day (2017), Midsommar (2019) and Ready Or Not (2019) to name but a few, have lead female characters that are more thoroughly and interestingly written, with actual character development and satisfying story arcs. And what about the Black women characters? I hear you ask. Well, in Jennifer’s Body Amanda Seyfried kicks a Black female doctor in the chest at the start of the film, there is one extremely minor part in The Cabin in The Woods, none in Zombieland, zero in It Follows, zilch in Midsommar, and zip in Ready Or Not. Happy Death Day has two, Lori (Ruby Modine) who is the jealous roommate of Tree (Jessica Rothe) and tries to kill her over an older, adulterating professor and the second is one of their sorority sisters played by Cariella Smith who gets ridiculed for being fat (she gets a chocolate milkshake with her lunch) and who is hilariously named Becky for cryin’ out loud.
The big remakes or sequels don’t fare much better. Evil Dead (2013) a remake combining elements of the first two original films, has Olivia (Jessica Lucas), Mia’s (Jane Levy) friend, who is a nurse and is there to quite literally care for Mia. Olivia is the second to get infected, but the first of the group to die. The remake of Carrie (2013) has Erika (Mouna Traoré) who is introduced at the prom as the Black guy’s girlfriend and dies soon after. Blair Witch (2016) has Ashley (Corbin Reid) who is again, girlfriend of Black guy and acts as the peacemaker for all the other characters, she is the first to be injured and the third to die. Zombieland: Double Tap (2019) has Rosario Dawson playing Nevada, who it seems is mostly there to sleep with Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) and be fought over by him and Albuquerque (Luke Wilson). She also has a knack for showing up at just the right time to save everyone. Black Christmas (2019) makes a valiant effort and has a whopping three Black women in it. Granted two are fairly minor roles, but one, Kris (Aleyse Shannon) is a key player. Sure she is very much the angry Black woman justice warrior with causes that her friends seem to find mildly amusing, and yes she does spend most of the film being the ultimate pal and one woman support network to Riley (Imogen Poots), but at least she survives, after turning up at just the right time to save Riley, of course.
That’s a lot of films and I’ve barely scratched the surface. The main question I had after my epic re-watch was: why? Black women who actually make it into the films are shown as usually being smarter, wiser, and stronger than the Final Girl. In real life, Back women have endless experience and are also viewed, sometimes to our detriment, as being much stronger and more resilient than our white counterparts. I literally can’t even count the number of times all 5’2” and 98lbs of me have been called intimidating, threatening, or just plain scary by people twice my size and height and with at least twice my power in that situation or the world in general… Doesn’t it follow that me and women who look like me should be considered the perfect candidates for Final Girls? The short answer is: no. Immediate competence has no place in the Final Girl fantasy. And the ‘why’ of it comes from, I believe, a perceived lack of innocence when it comes to Black women, especially if they’re dark skinned. The general rule, it appears, is that the fair of heart are also fair of skin. Innocence is an ever-broadening term as far as horror films are concerned and has moved on from the simple “girl is obviously good and virginal” trope, for the most part. The modern Final Girl tends to have innocence thrust upon her by circumstance; one or two dead parents, a terrible boyfriend, an addiction, etc. These circumstances illicit empathy from us, the audience, because whatever flaws our Final Girl has, it’s not her fault and she will most likely, by the end of the film, overcome her sad/bad past and, in this way, the idea of innocence is preserved and reserved for white women. The same circumstances, were they to be applied to a dark skin Black woman, would come with racist stereotypes and bias, conscious and unconscious, rather than empathy. Absent parents, abusive partners, and addictions? Just another day in the ghetto amiright? Of course, this is not actually the truth, but part of a bigger problem white filmmakers have when it comes to how they think about race and especially how they view Black women. Apart from being systemically racist, which is bad enough, Hollywood suffers from a severe lack of imagination.
The horrors we do have with Black female leads, films like Gothika (2003), 28 Days Later (2002), The Perfection(2018), and Sweetheart (2019), still have mainly white casts to bolster the film. Gothika has its own problems with a white woman ghost putting a live Black woman in danger to help herself. Naomie Harris is her usual brilliant self in 28 Days, and I’m never going to be upset about Cillian Murphy being anywhere, but I will say that Harris’ role ends up revolving around looking after the younger white girl and putting herself in harm’s way as a result. The first half of The Perfection is Allison Williams torturing Logan Browning for her own good, apparently, and most of the film is told very much from Williams’ point of view. Sweetheart is doing perfectly well with just Kiersey Clemons dealing with her monster issues and I have no idea why her white boyfriend and friend wash up to be annoying and mean to her for twenty minutes while she provides for them and tries to protect them. Plus, in all these films, like the ones that came before them, we face the problem of light skin Black women, by no fault of their own, being deemed the only acceptable version of female Blackness allowed on screen.
That all being said, the tide is hopefully turning. Jordan Peele, the one-man horror encyclopaedia, has made several points with his first two horror features. Get Out (2017) was deservedly an overwhelming hit. Us (2019) gave us not one, but two Lupita Nyong’os and proved once and for all that not only could a dark-skinned Black woman lead a mainstream horror, but she could do it twice over with two perfect performances in the same film. In the same year Nyong’o also starred in Little Monsters (2019), a charming zombie comedy where she is the perfect kindergarten teacher, adored by everyone who meets her, as she should be. Nia DaCosta’s Candyman (2020) is highly anticipated by me (and everyone else) and features Black people, and women especially, firmly in the main roles.
Peele’s films pass the Latif test and I suspect DaCosta’s will too. Three films doesn’t seem like a lot when you look at the myriad of films that failed before and the many that will no doubt fail in the future, but three is a start, and we need to start somewhere.
It seems promising but, at the risk of sounding greedy, I want more. More diversity, more inclusion, more opportunity. More Black horror filmmakers, more Black horror film stars, especially ones who identify as women. There are many more stories to be told from a different perspective. It makes for more nuance and more interesting stories and isn’t that what we all want? Black female led horrors also make money which I know is what film executives want. So, what’s up Hollywood? Am I not good enough for a Jason or a Freddie? Am I not an appropriate vessel for a demon possession? Are my brains not as delicious as my white counterpart’s? I’m ready to find out.
I’ll end with a quote from the irrepressible well of talent that is Miss Janet Jackson: “I’m convinced that we Black women possess a special, indestructible strength that allows us to not only get down but to get up, to get through and to get over.” If that’s not real Final Girl shit, I don’t know what is.
Isaura Barbé-Brown is a Hackney born and based actress. She studied at AADA in New York and BADA in Oxford. She has done talks at the BFI for their Squad Goals event and with the Bechdel Test Fest on race in romantic films. She has also been on panels for BFI Future Film, The Watersprite Film Festival and The Norwich Film Festival. Isaura’s acting work covers theatre, film, tv and voiceover. She has also written short film scripts and plays as well as short stories and poetry
We've been going independently for years now, and so far have self-financed every single project. In order to do more work, and continue supporting amazing filmmakers in the genre space, we've launched a Patreon.
If you are able to support us and the work we do on Patreon, we'd truly and deeply appreciate it.