Photo by The All-Nite Images

After watching countless hours of scary movies and sifting through a decade’s worth of city and county paperwork, the Center for Racial Studies in Cinema and Crime (CRSCC) released a gut-punching report that defies the long-held belief that black men are safer on the streets of America than on the silver screen.

“We found that as cinematic representations of black men have become less entangled in tropes, such as being the first to die, the law enforcement statistics reflect an opposite reality,” said a spokeswoman from the CRSCC. The intensive study revealed that black teenagers are six times as likely to be shot by police while wearing a hoodie as they are to be the first cast member murdered by a masked slasher. More surprisingly, the average percentage of black actors to survive a horror film is twice as high as the amount of black males who walk away unharmed from a routine traffic stop.

Popular blogger and film critic, Linda Holland, was stunned by the results. “Horror is supposed to represent the extremes, to be an exaggeration of reality,” she laments, “Michael Myers is now less frightening than Officer Myers.” Holland plans to scour the CRSCC report to confirm its accuracy in capturing the representations of black victims in horror films, but her initial reaction is that the findings ring true.

The CRSCC study has encountered heavy backlash on social media, with “#allhorrorvictimsmatter” trending on Twitter. Some have argued that the number of white victims in horror films far exceeds those of color, so it is unfair for the CRSCC to focus exclusively on black performers. The CRSCC has responded to those claims by pointing out the disproportionate ratio of deaths for black persons, whether being chased by a vengeful ghost or gunned down by a veteran police officer.

Regardless of the debate over the findings, new research in the horror genre will continue to be at the forefront of the conversation about race in America. Experts predict that the entertainment industry will evolve faster than the justice system, leading many to believe that black protagonists will become the sole survivors of horror films long before their chances improve with law enforcement.