Hilarious promotion for Tim Story’s new film, The Blackening, has been circulating online and through social media for months. Based on the Dewayne Perkins- written short, 3Peat Presents: The Blackening, It asks, what happens when all the horror movie characters are Black? I ask the question, is this premise enough for a feature-length film?
What’s it about?
Morgan (Yvonne Orji) and Shawn (Jay Pharoah) arrange a Juneteenth reunion for their college friends. They rent a cabin in the woods, the perfect place to reunite, play games, drink adult beverages, and engage in medicinal herbs.
Lisa (Antoinette Robertson), DeWayne (Dewayne Perkins), and Allison (Grace Byers) arrive at the cabin, only to find King (Melvin Gregg) being harassed by a local park ranger (Diedrich Bader). King is being questioned about being on the premises, even though it is obvious that they rented out the cabin for the weekend. This leads the crew to ask why Morgan and Shawn have them in the middle of the woods in the first place.
Nnamdi (Sinqua Walls) arrives at the cabin next. There is obvious tension between Nnamdi and Dewayne, primarily due to his past infidelity and mistreatment of his best friend, Lisa. Shanika (X Mayo) and Clifton (Jermaine Fowler) arrive last. Everyone is excited to see Shanika, but who invited Clifton? The crew barely remembers the socially awkward and soft-spoken Clifton, but Morgan invited him, so they go along with it.
Speaking of Morgan… where is she? No one in the crew had seen or heard from Morgan or Shawn since arriving, even though the Juneteenth decorations displayed within the cabin indicated that they beat them all there. The crew tries to reach out, but cell reception is terrible.
Suddenly the cabin loses power. While the crew looks for a fuse box, they stumble into a downstairs game room. Inside the center of the room, they find The Blackening, a racist board game with a talking Sambo head at its center.
The crew is offended by the sick game but doesn’t have much time to process the situation before a figure appears on a TV screen. What emerges is a man with a racist blackface mask. Behind him, their dear friend Morgan, tied up and frightened. The Blackface Killer threatens the crew with the murder of their friend unless they play the game. Without many options, the team plays The Blackening while trying to escape the cabin and save their friend.
My Reaction
The Blackening is the most recent movie to poke fun at the various tropes within horror films, particularly how horror has historically treated Black characters. The Blackening isn’t the first to do so, as the Wayans brothers gave us Scary Movie 1 and 2 twenty years ago. The Mike Epps-led Meet the Blacks explored similar themes as Black characters navigated a racist Purge-like situation.
But what makes The Blackening different is the exploration and relatability of the characters. Let’s make one thing clear, this cast is HUGE, especially for a movie with such a short run time. It isn’t unusual for a horror film, as Scream, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and other properties are infamous for their cavalcade of characters.
But these large casts are often excuses to feed the villain fresh cannon fodder. Every character in The Blackening has much more to do, yet do not overwhelm the film due to their relatability. You recognize each of these characters in your own friendship circles and easily understand their motivations.
. This cast, filled with actors from writing rooms and sketch-comedy backgrounds, understands storytelling’s collective purpose.
What separates The Blackening from a film like Meet the Blacks is that the situational comedy is more organic. It is not just a bunch of scenes that only exist for a gag. Also, the characters are funny and well-balanced. No actor seems to be competing for the movie’s biggest laugh but instead lets the script and narrative guide the humor. This may sound like a low bar, but it is one that we rarely see in comedies of this ilk.
Often, films of this type are filled with stand-up comedians competing to get the biggest reaction from the audience, even if it means sacrificing tone. This cast, filled with actors from writing rooms and sketch-comedy backgrounds, understands storytelling’s collective purpose.
What also makes this film work so well is the centering of Blackness. Black friend archetypes, the communal understanding of spades tournaments, and the navigation of Blackness in what would be considered white spaces (in this case, the woods of small-town America) are just some of the themes explored in a way that is both tongue-in-cheek and playful.
Even the exploration of Black people in horror movies, which is the film’s true center, is approached with nuance. Many a conversation has been had with my friends about how Black people would react in a horror movie scenario. The Blackening shows all those choices in action but doesn’t beat you over the head. Because there is nuance, the gag never gets tired. Much credit should be given to Tim Story (Barbershop, Ride Along), who has proven adept in Black storytelling’s nuance.
Where The Blackening succeeds in comedy and relatability, it fails in horror. The absurd-looking Blackface Killer should have been more intimidating. The Blackface Killer’s weapon of choice, the crossbow, delivers some of the weakest kills in horror history. He also lacks physical intimidation, leaning more towards the average, killable foe of the Ghostface Killer (Scream) than towards the indestructibility of Michael Myers (Halloween). However, there is no attempt to play into the scariness of the maniacal Ghostface. Instead, you get an antagonist that is as underwhelming as his crossbow.
Overall Rating
The Blackening succeeds in many ways, particularly in centering Blackness while being approachable to wider audiences. The cast is synergetic, the bits are funny, and the narrative is satisfying. It may not reach the comedic highs of Scary Movie or Meet the Blacks, but there are enough laughs to hold the film together. A bit more focus on building the Blackface Killer as a legitimate threat and increasing the scares and frights would have elevated a good movie to greatness.
Horror and comedy can co-exist; it often does. It is too bad that The Blackening misses the opportunity to show this genre-blending at its best. And yet, The Blackening is at its best regarding satire and showing how well we would do if we genuinely had to survive a situation.
