Racist horror tropes are the first to die in the slasher comedy 'The Blackening'

When Keenen Ivory Wayans's Scary Movie became a huge hit more than 20 years ago, the trope about Black characters in slasher flicks – that they're usually the first to die or rarely survive until the very end – was already decades old, and still going strong. One scene in the spoof directly references Scream 2, a movie released just three years earlier, where Jada Pinkett Smith's character is stabbed to death in front of a movie theater audience before the opening credits have even rolled.

The DNA of can be peeped in , a very funny new horror comedy directed by Tim Story. Like its cinematic ancestor, there's also a direct reference to Pinkett Smith's character and plentiful jokes and gags poking fun at unique aspects of Black culture. Yet much has changed over the last few years as Black creators have found more opportunities and mainstream success exploring blackness through a horror lens. Black characters are all over this genre now, even triumphing over the bodily threats they face from their horrific predators. acknowledges this and thus poses an apt and ingenious question as its premise: What happens when every main character in the slasher flick is Black?