The Blackening is a comedy-horror about seven friends forced to play a game called “The Blackening” to ensure their survival and determine who is the blackest out of their group.
We all can’t die first. Who is “we?” A group of seven black friends—Lisa (Antoinette Robinson), Dewayne (Dewayne Perkins), Nnamdi (Sinqua Walls), Allison (Grace Byers), Shanika (X-Mayo), Clifton (Jermaine Fowler), and “King” (Melvin Gregg) are college friends linking up for the first time in 10 years at a secluded cabin in the woods celebrating Juneteenth and simply being together again. Their reunion is peppered with spades, substances, and a lot of sugary Kool-Aid.
Some awkwardness aside (a group that big will always have some of it between a small handful of people), the group is settling into the night up until electricity goes out and all the doors in the house are locked. Save for one, the game room. In the center of it is a game called The Blackening, offensive in appearance and instructions. Nobody wants to play, but when they see a friend in peril, they’re forced to play because they’re all in peril. In the process of saving each other, they’ll all figure out who is the blackest. Fascinating, even in the face of fear.
The trope of a black person almost always being the first to die in a horror movie has been an age-old one, if a bit of conflation. As a moderate horror watcher who also happens to be a black male, the dying first thing I often saw as an exaggeration, but knew that being black in most horror movies is a recipe for doom and usually that’s been the case—while knowing that any horror movie that has a high kill count will kill off many cast members—we just notice it more when a black individual gets the ax in a typically white dominant cast. That’s a lot of words to say that for a long-standing trope, it’s surprising that a full-length feature about it is finally getting released now in The Blackening.
One time music video director Tim Story directs the film, a pretty steady hand in Hollywood from Barbershop and Fantastic Four to Ride Along, Think Like a Man, and a rebooted/requeled Shaft. The Blackening is the first time he’s dipped his toes into horror, albeit mildly. He’s got fine fundamentals, with the opening scene probably being the best meld of really good tense atmosphere and funny jokes. From there, Story attempts to use the cabin in the woods setting for scares, but it’s not as effective and the limited scope of the environment is felt which in turn limit frights. Granted, this is a comedy flick first and a horror second, yet I think it’s safe to say that Story and co. didn’t want this to be completely toothless as it tends to be in stretches.
The Blackening is entertaining. Raucously so at certain periods of the runtime, specifically in the first half when the characters try to make sense of what they’ve been forced into and what it’ll take to survive. Written by Tracy Oliver and cast member Perkins expanding on a 2018 short, the questions asked through the guise of the game on what really makes someone Black in today’s America are equal parts witty and weighty. The first half of the film is undoubtedly stronger than the second, where the game keeps things at a kinetic pace, whereas the second moves away from the game and splits the group into two (a typical no-no for any horror, but smarter thinking here) and starts to become predictable with its plotting and reveal(s).
On initial glance, the easy comp for The Blackening would appear to be Scary Movie, which isn’t as apples to apples as one might think, as there’s no prior template for it like Scary Movie had from Scream. It’s a level of sophistication above the former, but doesn’t quite operate with the self-awareness that defines the latter for better and worse. As such, it lives in this slightly murky space of tonal uncertainty when the second half plays more straightforward.
It is a big cast that comprises the movie, and thankfully, just about everyone in it has superb chemistry with one another. That doesn’t mean that all of the characters are great; a few are more abrasive than others. But it does mean that taken collectively, it’s a strong effort. The versatile Fowler steals the show as Clifton, yet others like Perkins and Byers feel positioned for a silver screen breakout after this.
It can be debated if The Blackening needed a wide(ish) theatrical release, and the first weekend box office results would probably suggest not. That’s a mild bummer, but I see The Blackening finding a second and third life on streaming later in the year and beyond. Even if the trope is factually off by a smidge, the premise joined with a great cast proves to have just enough juice—or maybe “King’s Kool-Aid” with extra sugar in this case—to make for solid small-budget counter-programming in the big-budget summer.