Editorials
Toni Morrison’s ‘Beloved’: A Gothic Classic of Black Horror Media
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.
Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
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