Long before Get Out, the film Beloved took on the horror of systemic racism and the harms that it causes Black folx. The movie, directed by Jonathan Demme and based on Toni Morrison‘s 1987 novel of the same name is a masterpiece of Southern Gothic terror that grapples with grief and taboo all wrapped in an haunting cinematic package. It flopped in theaters but it remains a powerful example of Black horror.
Morrison, who recently passed, had some misgivings about a film being made of her lauded, but very difficult book. For as haunting as the film managed to be, the book is even heavier and more brutal. Even so, the movie stayed incredibly close to the source material. It captures the mood and message of the original work and provides a vehicle for people to engage with the story who likely would never have picked up Morrison’s book, phenomenal as it was.
Beloved deals with slavery and in that it is not an unusual film as there is no shortage of cinematic portrayals of America’s history of chattel slavery. Amistad, Glory, Roots, etc all explore that same history from different vantage points. Beloved is different though because it is not a historical retelling. It is a horror film that treats the violence of slavery and the effects it has on the psyche of the people who endured it as horror. Much in the same way that Get Out treated racism as a source of horror. But where Jordan Peele crafted his story through layers of metaphor and satire, the horror in Beloved is visceral and real. The horror is history and the supernatural is a metaphor for handling the real trauma that results from it.
The story revolves around Sethe, played by, of all people, Oprah Winfrey, an escaped enslaved woman with four children. They all make it to freedom but the man who held them in captivity finds them and comes to take them back. Upon realizing who is coming for them, Sethe murders her children rather than let them return to the life they escaped from. The slaver, seeing what she has done, leaves in disgust. As it turns out, only one of her children is actually killed, her oldest daughter, Beloved. After this event, the family is haunted and then, after many years, Beloved shows up “in the flesh”
This is a very Gothic tale and in true Gothic fashion, focuses on women. The narrative is built around Sethe, her living daughter Denver and of course, Beloved. The root of the haunting is trauma and slavery, combined with a deeply taboo act: a mother murdering her own children. This second point is only hinted at, leaving you, the viewer, to try and unravel what is going on in the house. Until, of course, the secret is revealed. For most of the movie you question if the supernatural is truly supernatural or if Beloved is a very clever con artist. Was there ever a ghost or is Sethe just mad? Does the answer even matter when the trauma and taboo that these questions are built on are very, very real?
This is why the film is such an important piece of Black horror. There is nothing in it that is for shock value. There is no romancing of the bones of the story. It is beautifully shot and atmospheric but remains a brutal and haunting tale. It deals with slavery but is about Black trauma presented in a non-sensational manner, despite it’s supernatural elements, which is uncommon for a genre film. There are no voodoo priests, no ancient curses. There is only the horror that was done to Sethe, the horror that she acted out in return and the terrible reality of living with that. Or not living with that.
Beloved absolutely bombed at the box office. It didn’t even come close to making back its $80 million budget. Even powerful performances by Winfrey, Danny Glover, and an up and coming Thandie Newton weren’t enough to sell this movie to audiences in ’98. But like most horror, how it does on the big screen isn’t really indicative of its overall worth.
When we talk about Black horror, it is often movies like Tales From the Hood and Candyman that we remember and discuss as testaments to the genre. But Beloved also deserves our recognition for being so unflinching in its capture of trauma, Blackness and the taboo.
