In telling the story of an ancient and malevolent spirit, The Darkness highlights horror's most problematic trope. Horror is a genre built on tropes, and many have become endearing to audiences, but some haven't aged particularly well. The Darkness deploys a horror movie trope that has absolutely not aged well — utilizing non-white culture to propel the story of its white characters.
The Darkness, from Blumhouse Productions, follows the Taylor family after their return from a vacation to the Grand Canyon. After frightening things start happening to their family, and their young son Michael begins behaving strangely, the Taylor realized that their son unknowingly brought a demonic presence home with him.
In the film's climax, the Taylors turn to non-white secondary characters to learn more about the ancient spirits and how to banish them. These characters' only purpose in the film is to assist the Taylor family. It's an exclusionary and lazy storytelling tactic, but unfortunately this Blumhouse horror movie isn't the first or last horror film to utilize this problematic trope.
The Darkness Highlights A Problematic Trope In Horror
Just like every film genre, horror movies have been guilty of deploying racist tropes. For a period of time, slasher horror films were known to kill off Black characters before any white characters were to meet their maker. The genre has outgrown this overtly racist trope for the most part, but has still gotten away with more subtle ones. But unconscious tones of racism still live in plenty of horror films. Ancient supernatural spirits are a stable in the genre, they're often that of Native American origin, just as in The Darkness.
The problem isn't introducing these diverse cultures, but the way they're done. The Darkness is a prime example of that. Diversity is primarily introduced in the film as a mythical scare tactic, and that tactic is used only to move the story of its white characters forward. It's something that's been done in many horror movies before The Darkness. An ancient spirit attaches itself to a white family, and a non-white character comes in to act as a spiritual guide to help them prior to the film's climax.
The trope is a form of lazy and racist storytelling, but there's an easy way to overcome it. Horror simply needs to tell more stories about non-white characters. Many horror movies utilize these cultures in their stories anyway, so it's time to bring them to the foreground. White characters aren't necessary to bring these stories to life, and The Darkness's abysmal Rotten Tomatoes score adds further weight to this being problematic and unnecessary storytelling. There's a need now more than ever for diversity in horror film. Movies like Candyman are a step in the right direction, but an even bigger step forward would be eliminating racist and problematic tropes, such as those displayed in The Darkness.
