The Plot: It’s time for a weekend getaway for a group of friends who haven’t got together in a decade. Among them are Allison (Grace Byers), Clifton (Jermaine Fowler), King (Melvin Gregg) and Dewayne (Dewayne Perkins). They head for a cabin in the woods, patrolled by a suspicious park ranger. Upon arrival, they discover a games room and a creepy, not-politically-correct board game called The Blackening. It will test their knowledge of how black they are, but if they fail to answer correctly the results could be fatal. There is a masked killer on the loose and is listening in…
The Verdict: Since Scream revitalised the then-languishing horror genre in the mid-1990s, subsequent horror films have felt the need to be achingly self-aware in how they approach their stalk-and-slash antics. A common trope is that the token black character is among the first to die – hence an early reference to Scream 2 in new ‘horror-comedy’ The Blackening. As the poster tagline states ‘we can’t all die first’, but that’s about as self-aware as this ultimately pointless film gets. It throws together a typically squabbling group of friends hunted by a crossbow-wielding (how quaint) maniac with a vendetta on his/her/their mind. The killer(s) play mind games with the group, testing their friendship and just how much they know of their heritage – and horror movies too. If only it was as exciting as that sounds. It’s like watching a geriatric version of Saw, moving slowly enough to induce watch-checking and sadly without the laugh-out-loud gore required of the genre.
It shouldn’t have been like this really. It starts intriguingly, setting up its stereotypical horror setting with light, tongue-impaled-in-cheek humour. The Blackening game is creepy enough to create some dramatic tension between the group, but it’s what Ride Along director Tim Story does with it that causes narrative problems. He appears to have some difficulty finding his way through the script by Tracy Oliver and actor Dewayne Perkins, which is flat and barely comes to life. This kind of horror scenario is well-worn, so he really needed to inject some consistent energy into his scenes to surprise audiences and keep them on their toes along with the characters. It doesn’t help that the characters are so sketchily-written to resemble cardboard cutouts who are hastily moved from one scene to the next and plonked in front of the camera, dodging prop arrows along the way. The anonymous-sounding actors are a mixed bag of talent – some are OK, some are poor but it’s a struggle to engage with them when there’s so little to engage with. It is after all based on a skit, so that’s a meagre starting point.
The tone of the film is all over the place as well, with Story unable to settle on being either funny or scary – or both. Horror and comedy go together like flies and the undead, ideal coffin companions in the graveyard. It’s not that hard to get right, right?. When the director and his production team aren’t buying into either genre to sell their film, then who is The Blackening for then? People who don’t like horror movies perhaps? It certainly doesn’t appear to belong on this side of the pond, given that it’s loaded with Americanisms that won’t register. There’s a general laziness to the filmmaking which screams straight-to-streaming, given how anonymous and dull it is in its execution. Even the kills lack shock value. The biggest crime a horror film can commit is to be boring and The Blackening is a killer bore that offs 97 minutes of your time with no apologies. Look out, Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey. There’s another contender lining up for the worst horror of the year.
Rating: 1 / 5
Review by Gareth O’Connor
Directed by Tim Story.
Starring Grace Byers, Jermaine Fowler, Melvin Gregg, Dewayne Perkins.