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.
Brooke (Reign Edwards)
Character Arc:
When HellFest begins, Brooke is only worried about her two best friends (Natalie and Taylor) not getting along and ripping each other heads off. Unbeknownst to her and her clique, there’s another problem primed to ruin their fun: a killer (who has the dumbest MO in modern slasher history) hell-bent on making life a living hell for those who don’t find the festivities of HellFest scary enough to their liking. Unfortunately one of those people happens to be Natalie. Brooke is the only one who takes Natalie seriously when weird shit starts to go down, and even chases after the killer in a boldly dumbass move that led me to believe she was about to bite the dust. Nope! After seeing her boyfriend get gutted, Brooke and Natalie hightailed it to a fun house where they both combated the killer and made it to final reel. Surprisingly.
Fun Trivia
The promotional posters feature actresses Amy Forsyth (Natalie) and Bex-Taylor Klaus (Taylor) on the poster with Reign Edwards slightly below them. This is could be due to Bex being more known from Scream: the TV Series, a popular show for horror fans, but it worked as a great fake out, because I honestly thought Brooke was not going to make it out alive.
Final Thoughts:
When the credits hit, I was stunned that Brooke made it. That shock melted into awe, and then later frustration, because despite Brooke being resourceful in some areas, she was still pretty much the damsel in distress during the final battle. The “black best friend” trope truly went into overdrive here, but to be completely honest, the movie focused solely on the inevitable dance of death between Natalie and The Other (God I hate that name), the killer of the film. So even the other best friend’s and the boyfriends didn’t even have much chance to shine. With that being said, I’m just glad we got another black female horror survivor to add to the Hall of Black Horror Survivors, despite the glaringly problematic attributes that lead her there.
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