It’s a wonder how Black women went overlooked in past horror films. With their presence unseen and openly neglected in past releases where white counterparts were given longer screen time, storylines mostly relied on resolving their innermost problems through challenging external factors. However, Black women face their complex existences continuously, grappling with their worthiness in a world where they’re disregarded.
Take the 2005 movie "The Skeleton Key," where Jill Dupay, vulnerably portrayed by actress Joy Bryant, aids her friend, caretaker Caroline Ellis (Kate Hudson), while she’s under duress at a haunted plantation home in Louisiana. Despite the state rounding out the top three in the country’s highest Black populations, the film doesn’t provide Ellis equal visibility as her white friend, although she’s meaningful to the plot. Black women in horror came of age in 1970s movies, most independently made, like "Ganga & Hess" and "Sugar Hill," but their decline came at the turn of the ‘80s well into the new millennium, feeding into the "Black character dies first" trope.
