Between filmic flesh and material flesh: socio-anthropological interconnections in horror films

Abstract

This study explores the theoretical and methodological potential of the social sciences to analyze the intersections between horror cinema and contemporary racial dynamics. In light of the classic trope that relegates Black bodies to disposability and premature death, this study examines how so-called “Black horror” mobilizes the uncanny and monstrosity to subvert the logic of structural oppression. Drawing on the disciplinary convergence between sociology and visual anthropology, the study employs filmic ethnography and the perspective of the “spectator-anthropologist” to investigate the film as a “world-on-film,” bringing together sociological imagination, speculative anthropology, critical storytelling, and Afro-surrealism. The corpus is based on a comparative synthesis of three previous studies by the authors: the short film Don’t Die First (2021), the Candyman franchise (1992; 2021), and the feature film Sinners (2025). The analyses reveal that supernatural threats are set against the harshness of material violence, positioning police brutality and institutional racism as the most lethal dangers that befall the flesh. It is concluded that these works effect a transition from “figurative poetry” to “direct poetry,” transforming the fantastic into a technology of “rexistance” capable of envisioning emancipatory horizons and ontologically affirming the continuity of Black existence both on and off the screen.