Horror is slowly moving away from the “Black guy dies first trope.” Michael B. Jordan’s Oscar win proves that.
Even if Sinners didn’t win Best Picture, it won a lot of Oscars. Ryan Coogler scooped up Best Original Screenplay for the film, Autumn Durald Arkapaw won Best Cinematography, and Ludwig Göransson won Best Original Score. And of course, to the online and IRL elation of many horror movie fans, Michael B. Jordan snagged Best Actor for his dual roles as Smoke and Stack. Jordan’s wins — including Outstanding Male Actor in a Leading Role at the Actor Awards, Best Actor in a Horror Movie at the Critics’ Choice Awards, and Outstanding Actor in a Motion Picture in the NAACP Image Awards — signal a new era of achievement for Black people in horror movies.
You could almost feel the global energy shift when Adrien Brody called Jordan’s name, and you got to see a beloved actor, who has been on our screens since he was a kid, revel in the weight of what’s happening. You see his co-stars Wunmi Mosaku and Delroy Lindo (Sinners’ Annie and Delta Slim), as well as Emma Stone and Paul Mescal, cheering for Jordan.
He clasped his mom and hugged his visionary director, Coogler, before thanking everyone, including the passionate horror fans who supported the Sinners team over the past year. When you look at the significance of the type of roles Jordan embodied in the horror genre, it’s easy to see why the vampire film had people coming back to the theaters again, again and again.
Why Jordan’s Win is a Big Deal for the Horror Genre
Jordan didn’t just do a phenomenal job playing two characters in a movie. This is a feat which we horror fans know something about, having seen the cast of Us play their characters and their Tethereds, and Jeremy Irons and Rachel Weisz play distinct twins in every incarnation of Dead Ringers. He also played horror leads with real compassion and warmth.
You can find protagonists with grit and antagonists with tenacity in every horror movie. In 2025, we saw this in the I Know What You Did Last Summer reboot gang, the Final Destination: Bloodlines ensemble, in Weapons with Aunt Gladys, and in Companion with Iris. There are plenty of characters in the horror canon that are tough as nails and have no qualms about raising a gun, a knife, or even a fork.
But Jordan played gangsters, one of whom became a vampire, with a clear tenderness. Smoke was unabashed in his soft spot for Annie and his community in the Mississippi Delta. Even devilish Stack’s glowing, demonic eyes softened when he realized he may have to leave his brother behind in the mortal world.
This is a big deal because Black men are often portrayed as ruthless, aggressive, and selfish in media. It’s also a big deal in the horror realm, because the genre has often been plagued by the “Black Guy Dies First” trope.
The Black Horror Legacy Kickstarted by Jordan’s Win
Photo Illustration by Caroline Colvin; “Michael B. Jordan Wins Best Actor” on Oscars YouTube Channel
The “Black Guy Dies First” trope is an even-worse version of the “Token Black Character Trope,” because one of the few or the only Black character lurks in the background of a movie — only to be killed unceremoniously in the first 15 minutes.
For example, Frost is the first person to die in Aliens. Dick Halloran is the only person who gets axed in The Shining. Likewise, Josh gets killed against his will in Midsommar. And sometimes, the Black people who get killed in horror movies are murdered so quickly that you don’t even get to find out their name.
The first person killed in American Psycho is an unhoused Black man whom Patrick Bateman happens to encounter. The first thing Lestat does when he wakes up in Queen of the Damned is drink a Black man dry and even the car in Christine kills the first Black person she sees.
Jordan’s win for Stack and Smoke is an acknowledgment of the kind of fully-fleshed out, complex roles Black people have been waiting for in the horror genre. All we needed was for someone to give us a chance to shine, in an original screenplay with a dignified vision, and Coogler graciously did that.
Jordan’s Win Was for Dual Roles That Flip the Trope on its Head
It’s not every day that we get to see Black characters with integrity or Black characters with something thoughtful to say. It’s not every day we get to see Black men who love their partners dearly, honor them, and uplift them — a far cry from Tyler Perry slop. At the same time, I’m very conscious of feeding into “respectability politics.” This term, coined by Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, describes the pressure to behave or appear a certain way if you’re a member of a minority group, in order to ensure the dominant group respects you. As a film lover, especially a horror movie fan, I’m not calling for pristine representation of Black people in movies either.
One of my favorite thing about Jordan’s win is that it reminds us of how, when he’s Coogler’s muse, he gets to play morally grey anti-heroes, who have thought-provoking perspectives and a method to their madness.
I’m cognizant of the fact that we didn’t jump from getting murdered by aliens, cars, and Wall Street yuppies straight to Sinners. Wes Craven nodded to this with the monologue of Maureen, played by Jada Pinkett-Smith, in Scream 2. Part of her explicit resistance to seeing the Stab movie with her boyfriend is the fact that Black people always die first in horror movies.
We had Jordan Peele’s Get Out and Nope, whose Black characters got to be Final Boys and Final Girls. Since then, we even got Sophie Wilde’s character in Talk to Me, Naomi Ackie leading Blink Twice, and Ayo Edebiri carrying last year’s Opus.
Jordan’s Win Makes Me Excited for What’s Next
In the speech following Jordan’s win, he thanked Jamie Foxx, Sidney Poitier, Will Smith, and Denzel Washington. All the men Jordan thanked dipped their toes into science fiction, horror, and thrillers. Foxx was in sci-fi mystery They Cloned Tyrone and vampire comedy Day Shift; Poitier starred in violent film noir No Way Out; Will Smith’s sci-fi legacy includes both Men in Black and I am Legend; Washington starred in Training Day as well as serial killer saga Fallen. I believe that Jordan’s win cements his own place in the long list of great Black male actors in scary movies on the silver screen.
“Thank you, everybody in this room, and everybody at home for supporting me over my career,” Jordan said in his Oscars speech. “I feel it. I know you guys want me to do well, and I want to do that because you guys bet on me. So thank you for betting on me. And I’m gonna keep stepping up.” I can’t wait to see how Jordan steps up next, and I can’t wait to see the bright, expansive future of Black creatives in horror.
