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.
Kelly Malcolm (Vanessa Lee Chester)
Character Arc:
Kelly Malcolm was a smart, athletic young girl with one problem: she couldn’t get her dad, Ian Malcolm, mathematician and chaos theorist, to pay any attention to her. On what was supposed to have been a weekend of bonding time with good ole dad, Ian reveals that he has to leave for a secret excursion and Kelly couldn’t come along. So, Kelly, as kids do in these Hollywood concocted situations, decides to stowaway in a trailer filled with armored materials and a map of an island filled with dinosaurs. Once on Isla Sorna, all hell breaks loose, and Ian tries to get her off the island before it gets worse. Too late. But after literally kicking the shit out of velociraptors and running from angry T-Rexes, Kelly managed to finally get the quality time she craved from her dad… who doesn’t look a damn thing like her. At all.
Fun Trivia
In the novel, The Lost World, Kelly is actually a white girl who snuck onto the boat with her classmate Arby, who is black. Steven Spielberg merged both characters together and christened Kelly as Malcolm’s daughter.
Final Thoughts
While mostly a sci-fi adventure movie, Kelly is included due to the deaths of tons of black people in Jurassic Park, and Jurassic Park III. However, they’ve fared better in the Jurassic World sequels.
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