Update: due to unforeseen circumstances, the remaining eight entries missed the BHM deadline and will spill into the next day or two. Sorry for the inconvenience.
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.
Moses (John Boyega)
Character Arc:
When a mugging goes wrong, it’s up to unlikely hero, Moses, and his crew of criminals to save the day and their entire block.
In the midst of mugging Samantha, a new tenant of the Wyndham Towers apartments that they also reside in, Moses and his crew witness an alien cocoon crashing into a car. When they search the wreckage they discover an alien creature and kill it. Instead of calling the cops and letting dead alien dogs lie, they take the creature back to their apartment complex and ask a drug lord to keep it safe. Big mistake. Other creatures land in the same area and hunt for the dead corpse of the alien the gang killed. After a few friends and other people in the area fall dead to the invasion, Moses takes matters in his own hands and eradicates the aliens and saves his block. He’s still arrested, but gets the proper respect he was looking for from his neighborhood.
Fun Trivia
Moses was John Boyega’s first film role.
Final Thoughts
Confession: I disliked this movie upon first viewing. I loved that Moses/Boyega survived and all that but… his pride got a lot of people killed. No matter the race, if an alien species lands in front of you, one thing you don’t do is touch it. It could have all types of bacteria on it that could affect you and anything close to it in the long run. While I do know that he was only looking for respect from his neighborhood and killing an alien before it does damage is a good way of gaining that, it doesn’t deter from the fact that the whole thing possibly could’ve been avoided if he had not of fucked with the female alien to being with. That was my initial thought (and some of it still remains), but the fact that it did land in the groups’ neighborhood and the creatures could’ve killed more if they had of mated trumps my initial thoughts of Moses and his quest for respect. I still would not have touched that damn thing though… But still, Moses is a modern day black horror survivor hero and deserves the respect he craved and garnered in the end.