This February, Midnight Social Distortion will be celebrating Black History Month by honoring Black horror characters, in particular Black horror survivors, throughout the twenty-eight day period. Each day will feature one black male and one black female survivor in horror and sci-fi to bring light to the positive, albeit still problematic, black champions of representation in horror. Some disclaimers first: obvious spoilers ahead, and not all horror survivors will be featured this go round, but will appear in later posts down the line.
Eddie Baker (Taye Diggs)
Character Arc
Eddie Baker was one of the five people invited to the old, haunted Vannacutt Institute for the Criminally Insane (that burned down in 1931 after the patients rioted and killed most of the staff members) to win a million dollars if they survived the night trapped inside. Apparently, the ghosts of the patients and murdered doctors became one with the house and summoned the descendants of the surviving staff members to finish the job it started all those years ago. However, Eddie, who turned out to be adopted, wanted no parts of his adopted family’s bullshit and battled his way out the house like a boss. At least he got a few million dollars for his troubles
Fun Trivia
According to IMDB, Eddie was supposed to have sacrificed himself to save Sara (Ali Larter) instead of Price (Geoffrey Rush) in the climatic escape scene, leaving Sara and Pritchett (Chris Kayan) as the survivors. That sounds boring as fuck.
Final Thoughts
Not much with ole Eddie. He just knew who the main survivor was gonna be and stuck with her for almost the entire movie. In the direct to DVD sequel, Return to the House on Haunted Hill, Sara was actually killed by an art thief, but Eddie wasn’t mentioned, meaning that he’s living his best life on an island somewhere with the millions he and Sara probably split after getting out the house. Stay hidden, Eddie. Stay hidden.
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