Loved the idea of it the first time I saw a preview. To me, it was like “FINALLY the black guy not only isn’t the first one to get killed (typical American horror movie), but is the HERO of the story”.
Even if it didn’t have the subversion of the typical horror movie trope, it looked like a good movie. I’m not much for “zombie movies” but I’d watch this one.
—
Pointedly, the fact that “the black guy is always the first one to be killed” movie trope *is* part of systemic racism. Jurassic Park, I predicted it when watching it on.. VHS (lol) with a few people. I said “Oh man, there’s a black guy in the first five minutes. He’s gonna get killed and a piece of his body is gonna fly off”.
“KEN YOU CAN’T SAY THAT!!”
“No it’s true. They all do it. It’s stupid. I think Hollywood thinks it’s ok because black audiences are used to shitty special fx with their skin tone and white audiences don’t notice the bad color matching and plasticy look to the body parts”.
“OMG KEN YOU’RE RACIST I DIDN’T KNOW”
Two pairs of folded arms that wouldn’t look my way. Black guy gets it. I glance over. They won’t look at me for the rest of the movie.
—
Oh there’s a number of movie tropes that aren’t right. The nerd with the glasses is arrogant and gets killed because he was “too smart for his own good”. The Southern good ol’ boys who want to lynch everybody who’s from out of town. The sociopathic New York businessman. The evil loggers who don’t care about the planet…. ok.. the last two I kinda believe….
–
[just kidding 
😛 logging companies actually have been replanting trees for decades now, responsibly, at least in the USA]
—
My experience with Jurassic Park was in the mid 1990s before I heard of “tropes”. [I just called them movie stereotypes]. But when TV Tropes came out online in the 00s, I was in heaven because FINALLY someone’s putting it all together.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlackDudeDiesFirst
====
[responsivevoice_button voice="US English Male"]