If you’re into comedy, or follow horror on social media, you have seen this iconic poster floating around months before The Blackening was released. It featured the main cast in poses reminiscent of a Scooby Doo lineup with white font stating “We Can’t all Die First.” Personally, that’s all I needed to be hooked.
The film is a fun and lighthearted horror comedy. Yeah, lighthearted. Despite the plot of the movie being rife with white supremacy, the overall narrative is extremely fun — and there’s a reason for that. Written by two of its all Black cast, The Blackening illustrates how extremely familiar the Black community is with these concepts and how folx encounter them every day. Even in the face of an exceptionally racist anonymous enemy in a board game’s golliwog, the crew overcomes using logic and community.
In The Blackening, a group of college friends throws a Juneteenth reunion party at small town, cabin-in-the-woods airbnb. They’re hardly able to ‘party-on’ before a mysterious force threatens their livelihood.
Going into this movie, I had expectations I shouldn’t have. The first can’t be helped. I was wholeheartedly expecting a supernatural horror similar to the tune of Gattlop. Also, as the previews feature a board game, I was expecting game-centric horror. Neither of these are entirely true. Very shortly after the game begins, some televisions in the cabin depict one of the group’s friends being held captive, proving to us that this board game is not possessed by the soul of a confederate soldier or anything silly like that. It is being controlled remotely. The latter point is liquidated about halfway through the film, when the board game is abandoned in favor of a traditional slasher/chase/hide-and-seek sequence.
Neither of these points altered the quality of the movie, they were just misconceptions I’d formed going in that I think altered my ability to process the movie in real time, and thus called for a second viewing.
The final discrepancy, however, took some time to digest and pinpoint. As a White guy doing what I can, when I can, to be respectful and elevate Black voices, I know that a lot of White people freak out at the word ‘Black’ despite it being an identity. I believe this preconception helped mold my expectations of ‘social justice’ and ‘education’. Because of this, the first viewing of the movie left me feeling like something was missing. That’s just it through: nothing is missing. This movie wasn’t made to educate my peers. It wasn’t even made for me, despite me enjoying it. This movie was made to be lighthearted while also poking jokes at Black stereotypes and the discrimination Black folx face every day just doing normal things. It’s supposed to be fun — not heavy — and it succeeds.
One of my favorite parts of this movie is the characterization. Each and every character is a real person that you’ve met, not just another stereotype with 1 personality trait. An example: one of my favorite characters, Dewayne — played by co-writer Dewayne Perkins — is the film’s queer representation, but he’s not just queer. He’s a best friend struggling with a sense of betrayal. He’s dramatic. He’s funny. He’s sweet. Similarly, King (Melvinn Gregg) is portrayed as a “gangsta” tough guy, but he’s also courageous, kind, helpful, and resourceful.
As for the horror, the movie has plenty of it with lots of suspenseful story beats as the protagonists run and hide from their captors. There is also a hilarious, over the top, and absolutely gruesome kill scene in which Lisa (Antoinette Robertson) annihilates one of the killers with a candlestick after both previously being insulted for her choice in defense and coming off as far too nervous to use her weapon.
This movie does suffer from a twist that may have been a bit too telegraphed, but I’ve watched far too many horror films to mind or not notice, so it didn’t pull me out too much.
Overall, it did exactly what it set out to do very well. I loved it and will certainly be buying it on Blu-ray shortly.
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