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.
Justin Carter (Don Mitchell)
Character Arc:
Justin left detective work behind to dabble in curating archaeological finds from Africa. At a reveal of some new finds from an African region, Justin met Prince Mamuwalde, who was very familiar with the pieces, and Justin had to admit that Mamuwalde knew his stuff. Then the bodies started to drop, emptied of blood with two puncture wounds in the neck. The police suspected Justin’s girlfriend, Lisa Fortier, the newly crowned Voodoo queen of the area, but Justin wasn’t having that. However, he knew something was up and did some investigating of his own, coming to the conclusion that vampires were on the loose. Again.
Following the fact that the brotha in the cape has to be the vampire, Justin informs Mamuwalde that he’s up on his game and that he doesn’t have long before he goes in for the kill. As promised, Justin and some cop friends end up crashing Blacula’s hideout to end the reign of terror and save Lisa’s life. Luckily, Lisa took matters into her own hands when Blacula angrily attacked Justin for disrupting the spell that was supposed to save him from the demon inside, saving her beau in the process.
Final Thoughts
He’s no Dr. Gordon Thomas, but Justin held his own against Blacula. The scene between him and the African vampire prince was fraught with tension, and I swear I thought he was gonna show up in the last frame a newly drained baby vamp. And when he was slinging arrows with the crossbow? Daryl Dixon could never…