Per Matt
Taking a wide glance at many successful horror movies released throughout the years, you’ll surely find quite a few of the same horror tropes. Each film might not feature every single one of them, but there’s a lot of generally accepted story elements found within the genre. If you’re a character within one, bad things only happen after uttering, “I’ll be right back.” Whenever found in a group of people, never split up to explore strange, dark rooms. Sex usually leads to a quick death. And more often than not, if you’re a minority character, you’ll be the first to go.
So, what happens when a group of seven Black characters gathers for a Juneteenth get-together at a cabin in the woods — it’s actually a house, as one character makes the correction, a very nice one, at that — and bad luck follows them? Well, they can’t all be killed first. This is one scenario where The Blackening attempts to flip the script on generally accepted horror tropes that have stuck around for far too long.
When dealing with long-time friends, petty squabbles are often involved, which is the case here. They can just as quickly start a fight as defend one other, as situations may develop. Best friends are often like that, but this film takes it to another level, becoming a social satire that involves a whole lot of identity politics.
Challenged by a “Jim Crow version of Monopoly,” the friends must use their combined knowledge of said big-screen tropes to poke fun at previous projects before being confronted by an all-new Big Bad (although the killer’s name is never uttered, the credits list him as “Blackface”). Each one must use their street smarts in order to survive this reunion-gone-bad.
I’ve got to admit, there are some pretty good meta oneliners scattered about the film. How we, as an audience, decipher these comments, determines if we like the movie or not. But if you can’t hear them, how are you expected to understand them?
At my screening of the film, the audio was bad. And it wasn’t just muffled, the audio sounded like it wasn’t recorded at a high quality, at all. I missed so many pop-culture references, because I couldn’t hear them. Now, this may be an isolated instance, so your mileage may vary, but I throw this element into the wind as a possible outcome, regardless.
At times, The Blackening feels like it’s breaking new, horrific ground, much like Get Out. But instead of being a psychological horror show, more often than not, this one feels a little too on the nose.
While it isn’t intended as a Drew Goddard parody, this location is creepy and there’s seemingly tons of cameras per room following our visitors’ every move (even though we never see them). There’s even a panic room, complete with tons of monitors (and a few torture devices) hidden within the basement. In fact, as the story develops, I kept thinking this was a creative spin on the Saw franchise, even though this killer uses a crossbow. But Jigsaw, Blackface is not.
My biggest complaint is a creative one. For a movie that attempts to flip the script on so many poorly accepted tropes, Jermaine Fowler’s squeaky, almost lispy voice as Clifton is about as stereotypical as they come. Attempting to mimic a few nerdy “affluent Republicans” he met at Maryland comedy clubs, which he admitted in pre-release interviews, was definitely a swing and a miss by this geek. As much as Tim Story’s release raises genre, it also lowers the floor of expectations.
Although not truly predictable, the storyline to The Blackening will feel familiar to fans of the horror genre. That can be good and bad, for people wanting to see something new in movie theaters this weekend.