The Pitch: If Scream made its bones as a horror movie for horror fans, The Blackening is the horror movie for the Black members of that same audience. An unapologetically Black horror-comedy, The Blackening cleverly plays on its audience’s expectations while never once taking them for granted or insulting their intelligence.
The film centers around college friends reuniting after several years apart, all in the name of celebrating Juneteenth — and yes, at least one character notes that partying in a cabin in the woods sounds like a terrible idea for anyone with melanated skin. At the cabin, the characters stumble upon a killer who wants to play a game (like another famous horror villain)… From there, horror and comedy ensue as the friends find themselves at a madman’s mercy. The worst part? It all feels very personal.
The Satire: The Blackening is a remarkable film in that it’s produced by a big studio with a prominent name director behind the camera (Tim Story, of Barbershop, Think Like a Man, Ride Along), but it’s aimed directly at one audience. Tracy Oliver (Girls Trip, Harlem) and Dewayne Perskins’ (The Amber Ruffin Show, Brooklyn Nine-Nine) script doesn’t hold anyone’s hands; you either understand the cultural references or you don’t. Tying that meta aspect of film into the narrative speaks to the level of detail of everyone involved.
The movie interrogates horror tropes and Black stereotypes, while sneakily creating characters that fit the prototypical mold for any Friday the 13th installment. The Cabin in the Woods played with similar ideas but from the perspective of an audience who craved, nay, demanded the film follow a certain logic. On the other hand, The Blackening takes the viewpoint of someone asking a fundamental question: “Why?”
Why do Black characters usually die first? Why do they split up when we all know the outcome? Why not use a gun if you have one, when the killer has an unwieldy and impractical crossbow? And, probably the most important, why play a psycho’s game? The Blackening answers all those questions comedically within its narrative. Balancing comedy and horror is the equivalent of jumping off a high dive and landing gracefully – and safely – in a kiddie pool.
The Blackening pulls it off partly because of the writing and partly due to its cast. Grace Byers, Jermaine Fowler, Melvin Gregg, X Mayo, Dewayne Perkins, Antoinette Robertson, Sinqua Walls, Jay Pharoah, and Yvonne Orji understand the assignment. Each of them understands when the situation calls for real fear and when it needs a wink or a nudge to release all that tension. And they each play into the film’s more extensive conversation about how we define Blackness as a culture.
The Blackening (Lionsgate)
