Movie Review: The Blackening

Rating: 90/100

For decades, Black people have often been the first victims to be murdered in horror films. In the cases where they survive the film’s first few moments, they still rarely survive until the end of the movie, as evidenced by the legendary and tragic ending to Night of the Living Dead where a Black character survives to the end only to be killed in the film’s final moments when he’s mistaken for one of the zombies.

In The Blackening, the horror comedy from Tim Story (Barbershop, Ride Along), the first person to die in the movie is, in fact, Black, but only because almost the entire cast is Black, giving rise to the film’s appropriate tagline: “We can’t all die first.” The movie takes control of the typical horror film tropes and turns them on their head to create a Black-oriented horror spoof.

Written by screenwriter Tracy Oliver (Barbershop: The Next Cut, Girls Trip) and queer comedian/writer Dewayne Perkins (Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Amber Ruffin Show)—the latter of whom also stars as a character of the same name in the film—The Blackening tells the story of a group of friends who rent a cabin in the woods to celebrate Juneteenth weekend.

Upon exploring the cabin, they find a board game called “The Blackening” which features a talking Blackface character in the middle of the board who forces the players to answer questions about Black history and culture. Pretty soon, the game reveals a murderous twist for anyone who gets a question wrong, creating a sort of Jumanji-meets-Saw scenario. After a while, though, the premise of the board game is dropped, and the film becomes just an all-out slasher film, playing off popular horror movie conventions.

While the scenario of the film becomes more and more outlandish as it goes on, the humor always remains grounded in the realistic banter between the group of friends rather than any over-the-top slapstick like the Scary Movie franchise. Much of the success of any horror spoof relies on the ability of the film to actually scare the audience, and The Blackening does an excellent job of that. If all of the jokes were taken out of the movie, it would still be a solid slasher flick.

The cast doesn’t have a ton of big names, with SNL alumni Jay Pharoah as the biggest star in the whole ensemble, but the lack of big stars is somewhat of a benefit to the movie because it allows the audience to get lost in the characters. And, although the cast may not be the biggest names, they bring the big laughs. They also have outstanding chemistry between them, making it truly believable that this is a group of old college friends reunited for the first time in a decade.

The one gay character in the movie—the aforementioned Dewayne—is not portrayed in any problematic way, but his queerness isn’t particularly central to the plot, either. Only one mention is made of him being gay in the entire movie, although there are hints of it throughout. Still, it’s always great to see a gay character that’s completely normalized. Nobody stigmatizes the character for being gay. It’s almost a background element of the movie, but the fact that it doesn’t take center stage seems to normalize it even more.

Inevitably, the question will come up: “Will white people get the jokes in the movie?” That’s somewhat of an unfair question because nobody ever asked if Black people would get the jokes in Friends, but to answer an unfair question anyway: It depends on what type of white person. While Tucker Carlson would be likely to sit through this movie stone-faced, any white person who isn’t actively racist and has at least a rudimentary understanding of Black culture—and who doesn’t have a thin skin regarding jokes aimed at white people—is likely to still enjoy the flick. While much of the story centers around games of Spades, you don’t actually have to know how to play to follow the plot.

The film is likely to have a modest box-office return as it opens against such big-name movies as Disney/Pixar’s Elemental and the deeply problematic Flash film which will probably dominate theaters for the weekend, but it’s still likely to find its own audience. It’s a clever and fun romp through horror cliches, but, at its heart, the most endearing thing about the movie is its cast of characters and their friendships. Far from the callousness of some of the movies it parodies, the movie ends on a hopeful note, despite the death toll. All-in-all, The Blackening seems destined to go down as a cult classic.

Photo by Glen Wilson