Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
Delving into a century of genre films that by turns utilized, caricatured, exploited, sidelined, and finally embraced them, this is the untold history of black Americans in Hollywood through their connection to the horror genre.
Horror Noire fills a genuine gap in film scholarship, offering a richly argued, long-overdue examination of Black representation in horror from the silent era through Get Out. Its novelty is high because the subject matter and analytical framework are genuinely underexplored territory, and the film brings together a compelling roster of filmmakers, scholars, and critics. The talking-head format is competently executed but visually unremarkable, relying on standard archival clips and interview setups without adventurous cinematography. The narrative arc is coherent and educational, though the structure is fairly conventional for a genre-history documentary. The ending capably circles back to the cultural moment of Get Out as a watershed, but doesn't land with particular emotional or rhetorical force beyond summarizing its thesis.