The Blackening
This slasher social satire offers up more laughs than scares.
Film Yap is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
As a horrorhead and a fan of black culture you’d assume “The Blackening” (in theaters beginning Friday, June 16) would be right up my alley … and to a certain extent you’d be correct.
African American college friends Lisa (Antoinette Robinson), her gay bestie Dewayne (co-writer/co-producer Dewayne Perkins), her ladies’ man ex-boyfriend Nnamdi (Sinqua Walls, late of the “White Men Can’t Jump” remake), mixed-race smartypants Allison (Grace Byers), smart-mouthed Shanika (X Mayo), reformed gangster King (Melvin Gregg) and early arrivals Morgan (Yvonne Orji) and Shawn (“Saturday Night Live” veteran Jay Pharoah) have reunited and gathered to celebrate Juneteenth at a cabin in the woods. Nerdy interloper Clifton (Jermaine Fowler, “Coming 2 America”) also invites himself along for the festivities.
Things get weird quick when the group discovers the game room and the titular game itself. The Blackening is jokingly referred to as, “Jim Crow Monopoly,” supposedly “runs on racism” and has an electronic component as it’s connected to an archaic television set. Appearing on this TV is a masked killer who quizzes the pals and seeks to kill them in order of blackness starting with the blackest.
“The Blackening” is based upon a short film of the same name produced by Chicago comedy troupe 3Peat and riffs on the horror convention that black characters always die first. It’s helmed by journeyman filmmaker Tim Story (he directed the “Fantastic Four” flicks from the aughts as well as the “Think Like a Man” and “Ride Along” movies) and scribed by Tracy Oliver (“Girls Trip”) and Perkins (he served as a writer, story editor and co-producer on “Brooklyn Nine-Nine”).
“The Blackening” offers far more humor than it does horror. The cast is game and makes a meal out of Oliver and Perkins’ mostly funny material. The killer brandishes a crossbow – which is admittedly pretty novel – but results in a sameness to many of the scare scenes. It’s a low-budget production ($5 million) and its lack of scope often shows, but this should result in the project being extremely profitable.
The largely African American audience my wife and I saw an early screening with ate the picture up. I often had trouble hearing the dialogue as the theater had somewhat muffled sound and the viewers often went on prolonged laughing jags. (Surprisingly, my wife who’s far less into black culture than I am (suffice it to say she didn’t grow up with a “Boyz n the Hood” poster on her bedroom wall) seemed to enjoy the film even more than me.)
“The Blackening” isn’t nearly as scary nor does it cut as deeply as Jordan Peele’s “Get Out.” It’s probably more akin to the Wayans brothers’ first “Scary Movie.” It’s not perfect by any means, but it should make for a fun night at the movies with a rowdy opening weekend crowd.