When it comes to Hollywood, it might seem inappropriate to bring out Charles Dickens’ famous
line, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” The combination of COVID, strikes, an
underwhelming streaming model, and typical corporate reliance on stereotyped storylines has
vampirically sucked the blood out of the American film industry. Making matters worse,
superhero and action movies have leveled off in popularity and can no longer carry a studio’s
bottom line. All these factors have resulted in North American box office revenue in 2024 being
$8.6 billion, 23 percent lower than in the golden film days of 2019. In addition, ticket sales
dropped from approximately 1.2 billion in 2019 to fewer than 0.7 billion in 2022, which means
attendance has nearly halved within just a few years. Closer to the present, the first quarter of
2025 saw earnings in the U.S. and Canada at $1.34 billion, a seven percent decline from the
same period in 2024 (March 2025 specifically was down 50 percent year-over-year).
Back to Dickens, one may wonder what the “best of times” is.
The answer is the horror genre.
From The Conjuring: Last Rights to Weapons to Final Destination Bloodlines, horror movies
have dominated the box office recently and secured hallowed places in Rotten Tomatoes scores.
The category’s share of North American ticket sales reached a record 17 percent in 2025, much
higher than the 11 percent in 2024. That’s the highest market share for any genre in at least 30
years! When movies like The Conjuring: Last Rights are close to hitting half a billion dollars
globally in revenue, you know the genre is officially in the big leagues.
It really is the best of times for scary movies, and that has extended to Black and other minority
representation. As an example, Ryan Coogler’s Sinners remains one of the highest-grossing and
critically acclaimed films of 2025, and is likely an Oscar contender. Black-created movies like
Opus and The Woman in the Yard may not have been commercial monsters, but they were solid
niche films that are popular today (the arthouse “A24 vibe” the public loves).
Why are horror African American filmmakers and horror films overall striking gold? What
demographics are driving the horror renaissance, and is this a broader cultural shift? What
lessons are there for Hollywood in general?
Horror Movie Resurgence and Representation
It’s no secret that the horror genre was broken in the early 2000s. The category had exhausted its
various tropes: serial killers, haunted locations, supernatural villains, and so on. It lost so much
gravitas that it became caricaturized, from the Scary Movie franchise to Rick & Morty to parody
Halloween costumes. Michael Myers and Freddy Krueger have become humorous memes, rather
than representing our collective analytical Shadow. The genre should have gone the way of the
Western and other movie niches. That didn’t happen. Filmmakers became responsible with
budgets, took narrative risks, got creative with plots, and expanded their source material. The
results have been rewarding.
And demographics have mainly supported the rejuvenated genre?
Gen Z and people of color.
Today, Zoomers comprise about a third of horror movie audiences, and 91 percent admit to
enjoying scary flicks. Gender interest is balanced; however, the horror genre attracts greater
racial and ethnic diversity than most. African American attendance is more than double the
overall moviegoing benchmark (30.4% vs. 13%). Fourteen of the top twenty theatrical films in
2024 ranked by Black audience share were horror movies. Hispanic audiences have reached over
40 percent for particular horror titles, significantly exceeding the genre’s benchmark of 22
percent.
The horror genre is where both movie success and representation are happening in Hollywood.
And this includes filmmakers. Ever since Jordan Peele’s Get Out took the world by storm in
2017, Black and other minority led horror films have been an essential part of the genre’s revival.
Directors like Nia DaCosta and Ryan Coogler have become exemplars in the industry. I Saw the
TV Glow (2024), directed by trans woman Jane Flannery Schoenbrun, enjoyed the kind of
critical success typically reserved for avant-garde filmmakers like David Lynch. The HBO series
Lovecraft Country was well-received and even reoriented some of the genre’s racist past while
still tapping into the primordial essence of horror fiction. Again, Sinners might be the most
talked-about box office behemoth of this year.
It really is the best of times for scary times, and it’s only getting better.
The horror genre has not only provided opportunities and interest for people of color and
younger audiences, but also for women. Thanks to Sigourney Weaver’s portrayal of Ripley in the
Alien franchise, the cliche of the hysterical, meek, and brutalized female lead has gradually
eroded in movie plots. Complex and dynamic female protagonists dominate today’s lucrative
horror movies, like Smile, Ready or Not, and The Substance. Forty-three percent of horror films
featured female leads in 2023, the highest of any genre. This trend gave the character 53 percent
of screen time and 47 percent of dialogue, matching or exceeding men in visibility and voice.
African American representation has undergone a much longer trajectory than that of women.
Son of Ingagi (1940) was the first horror film to have an all-Black cast. It was later followed by
The Blood of Jesus (1941). Black actors occasionally appeared in horror movies, but often in
marginal roles or race stereotypes like the plantation owner’s mistress or the Magical Negro.
There just wasn’t much, but a desert for representation in horror, until 1968, when Night of the
Living Dead featured African American actor Duane Jones as the lead. Black horror films surged
in the 1970s with Blacula, Ganja and Hesse, and others that also fell within the blaxploitation
genre. African Americans widely appeared in mainstream horror movies, but unfortunately, they
received the same fate as your average Star Trek nameless henchmen: an early death. This
tropology is parodied brilliantly by LL Cool in the 1999 horror film Deep Blue Sea when his
character, Preacher, has a semi-fourth wall moment and states, “Brothers never make it out of
situations like this. Not ever!”
Spoiler: Preacher survives until the end of the film.
In the nineties, Black-centric horror movies like Candyman and Tales from the Hood brought
African American themes to the forefront, made money, were widely embraced by all
demographics, and became cult classics. However, it wasn’t until Peele and the overall
reinvention of the horror genre that inclusivity truly took hold and proved profitable at the same
time.
You Can’t Formulate Your Way to Box Office Success
One would think that Hollywood executives would be salivating at the opportunity to ape
horror’s runaway success in other parts of its crumbling empire. That pivot would also be
beneficial for an industry that claims it promotes diversity and inclusivity.
The issue is that much of the horror genre, especially minority-driven, cannot be replicated on a
spreadsheet or connect-the-dots screenplays.
Why is that?
First, good horror filmmaking is not only about gore or special effects, but also covers these
elements:
Cathartic release for audiences.
Often points to the darker side of humanity or nature that is frequently overlooked. As
Steven King once said, ‘We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones.”
Like Fairy Tales or myths, it highlights the need never to forget that this is a dangerous
world full of unknowns. The ancient Stoics stressed that to truly be alive, one must
constantly remember death.
Provides subtle or unsubtle social commentary.
The last element is key. In engaging horror movies, the supernatural trappings often conceal
powerful cultural issues that the general public must face. Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a masked
tale about the fear of immigrants in the Victorian era. Zombie flicks are allegories about a terror
of disease in a time of crowded cities and neighborhoods (reminds me of the skit in Key & Peele
where two African Americans during a zombie apocalypse are avoided by suburban undead
because of the color of their skin). The fierce Xenomorph of the Alien films, with its phallic head
and pharyngeal jaw, is a metaphor for male sexual violence and dominance. I Saw the TV Glow
is a symbolic account about transitioning within a nineties-era nostalgic, surreal horror drama.
Thus, impactful horror movies are not only about creating trauma, but also about facing and
overcoming it, as an individual or a people. Horror filmmakers understand that lived experiences
and cultural critiques are as crucial as latex and buckets of red dye.
And who better to tap into trauma, both collective and personal, than African Americans and
other marginalized groups?
Black filmmakers have drawn upon personal, cultural, and historical themes with universal
messages. These themes are skillfully presented symbolically and allegorically, often in a blood-
soaked manner, which sometimes makes the film seem like just spooky entertainment to the
general public. Take Sinners, which was marketed as a thrilling vampire fare. Yet at its heart, it
centers on the plight of Blacks in Depression era America and the smuggled African traditions
like voodoo and the blues that shaped the very identity of the country. The storyline also adds
subjects of alcoholism, family dynamics, and religion that are archetypal to all people.
Look at Get Out. Beneath this tense psychological thriller driven by speculative technology and
its nefarious creators, we have a powerful metaphor about the white liberal paradox of resenting
Blacks while being embracing of African American culture. This attitude relates to Malcolm X
and his comparison of white liberals to foxes, who show their teeth to Blacks but pretend it’s
only a friendly smile (in Get Out, the villains, before being exposed, are sure to claim they are
allies to the Black protagonist, like saying they voted for Obama).
Take Night of the Living Dead. On the surface, it’s George Romero’s masterpiece that officially
launched the modern zombie genre. But underneath the undead hood, the movie symbolizes the
horrors a Black person must endure in a world of (morally) dead majorities. The protagonist’s
greatest threat wasn’t the zombies but those attempting to wipe out the zombies for a better
world (and there’s always that collateral damage, a tale as old as racist time).
In Candyman, Tony Todd plays the vengeful spirit of a horribly executed slave who dared fall in
love with a white woman. However, a deeper subtext of the film is the horror of the urban blights
of the eighties, like Chicago’s Cabrini-Green, that robbed the hopes and very lives of millions of
African Americans across the country.
The examples are legion, even for other demographics. The main point is that for the horror
genre to continue thriving, it has to tap into honest and difficult-to-face themes and the
experiences from filmmakers and screenwriters who lived and understand them (Clive Barker
was the imagination behind Candyman; he is white, but he is also a gay man, so he understands
systemic injustice). You can’t be the next Nia DaCosta or Jordan Peele by leveraging a connect-
the-dots formulation. You become these directors because you or your people have experienced
the horrors of modern life on a personal level and know how to disguise them with the plot of an
entertaining horror movie. Hopefully, all this will scare people into improving human conditions
for everyone.
