Graveyard Shift Sisters

By Eden Royce  ( @EdenRoyce ) I enjoy horror in most of its forms, but I enjoy stories from and featuring diverse countries and cultures. African horror is rare to see.   Many people I speak with are even unfamiliar with African American authors of horror. Add female author on top of that and the list dwindles further. The Reluctant Dead by Nuzo Onoh is one of those rare works. Each of the six stories in this single author collection is richly laced with African folklore and the traditions that come from the Igbo culture. It is fascinating to read about the sights and smells and sounds of Nigeria, along with well drawn examples of the vast gap in class in this society, from the street hawkers to the privileged private school children that are taken to class by private drivers. Even the metaphors Onoh uses are appropriate to each story and give the stories the feeling of folk tales, warnings told to you by your mother to keep you from going outside of the neighborhood.

The Reluctant Dead  is a new and unexplored genre in horror, African Horror, which lovers of all regional horror like Korean, Scandinavian and Japanese genre will enjoy. If you like what you read, be sure to review on Amazon !

I'm doing The Carlton all over the visual stimulation this teaser trailer for the short film Afronauts , written and directed by Ghanaian filmmaker Frances Bodomo . With almost a dozen films under her belt and multiple Sundance appearances, Bodomo takes her audience on a trip back in time as it " tells an alternative history of the 1960s Space Race " while simultaneously pitting them in a present and future where technology gives us the opportunity to learn true stories of African contribution in science and space exploration.

I never really bother to watch cable network monster movies. At times when I'm lazing around, channel surfing and they're always on, I opt for a syndicated sitcom that I easily quote lines from. This is no judgement on these films. Not all of them are terrible. And they keep thirsty film career folks employed. I'm actually glad they exist, but getting me to watch one on a leap of faith is a chore. When Animal (2014) was released on VOD and in theaters June 17th, I made sure I got my second wind that evening to catch what I only speculated to be a cabin-in-the-woods-esque creature feature with two Black female leads. The uncommon casting is what piqued my interest.

I've gotten to know Kima over time on social media. She's hilarious, thoughtful, and one of Graveyard Shift Sister's first contributors. An avid science fiction reader and lover scary movies, especially the classics, she works as a therapist and is currently working on writing a comic book series. Another obvious note: Kima's favorite holiday is Halloween because in her words, "who doesn't enjoy a day of horror movies, candy and dressing up?!"  By her standards, she's one of "the coolest nerd[s] you'll ever meet!" I affirm this by stating the fact that she answered our call to hear from more Black female horror fans.

I'm a horror fan who is not sick of zombie narratives. Primarily because Black women writers and filmmakers are emerging with ways of placing the menacing reanimated around characters that we don't see enough of or at all in most popular depictions. These are characters who complicate minimalist concepts of survival due to the ways in which survival has had a doubly oppressive impact on their lives pre- zombie apocalypse. In the post- world, old establishments die hard; and the uniquely personal becomes the politically-charged universal. My utter disdain for the trajectory of the Showtime series The L Word is long gone and  Goodnight My Love is a 10 minute horror film I am boldly placing above that entire six season cluster. Goodnight focuses on Aimee ( Flavia Borges ) and Cynthia ( Kristin Anderson ), a Black lesbian couple using a moment away from evading zombies to deal with issues with homophobia, heteronormative impulses and its opposition that have plagued their

Every holiday season, I cannot shake observing the perils of mass consumerism. The television commericals alone seriously make me question why I even continue to watch live network television in the age of digital streaming. How its craftiness has gotten some of us thirsting for the latest electronic device well before even Halloween. It's the shit that we stand in line for that really makes me think about what this life thing truly means. If we're meant to just have. And the ugly self-awareness of spoilage when there are ghosts in our machines. My generation was drowned in the notion of 'having'. So Child's Play (1988) wasn't much of a surprise to me. In a very rudimentary way, it exposed that ugliness, and exploited it with cute youth innocence.

We understand Japan as one of the most globally lauded markets in cinema. Add horror to that mix and you're talking a ripple effect in marketable style and content that has been replicated as well as venerated. What often gets lost in the collective imagination are the voices from Asia that don't have that big film industry to draw upon. The smaller, the more invisible. But not much in a world of the internet and crowd funding is impossible. "Laos' first horror film director" Mattie Do is in fact, groundbreaking. One of four film directors working in Laos, she describes herself as, "the crazy horror chick that's calculating how much pig blood I can buy for the cash I've got in my pocket." Her first film Chanthaly was an international success, making waves at a past  Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas.

Actress-playwright now additionally screenwriter/producer/filmmaker Kia Barbee is the creator of the 2013 supernatural/teen drama web series titled, Evolve . Here's the breakdown: Evolve is a supernatural dramatic story about acceptance of self and responsibility seen through the eyes of a reluctant heroine and sheltered teenager Donia Reyes who inherits super abilities. Throughout the series Donia struggles to maintain a balance between what she wants and what she's destined to become, which is consistently challenged by her nemesis and teen villain in the making, Troi Lawson.