A group of friends who stay in a cabin in the woods have no choice but to play a deadly game. If they don’t find the right answers in the required time, a person may lose their life…
Black people are often the first to die in horror movies. A theory that was notably stated at the beginning of scream 2 and which has been verified in some classics of the genre, from shining to Gremlins.
It is this cliché in particular that is tackled in this horror comedy which is part of the post-get-out. Our seven friends – all African American – take part in a style game Jumanji and they must answer questions correctly, including one that asks to sacrifice the darkest person in the lot…
This extremely promising concept unfortunately does not hold up over time as the scenario seems incapable of exploiting it properly. It doesn’t help that the situations are rarely funny and the humor lapses into repetition. There’s even a vomit scene, like in the days of Scary Movie.
It’s not much better on the horrifying level. The inoperative sequences are roughly constructed, always supported by the music, to remind us that we are faced with a satire. The feature film makes fun of slashers – particularly of Friday the 13th and its derivatives – with a masked villain with a crossbow. Except that he does it by pouring into the facility, without taking the slightest risk.
This can no doubt be explained by the presence behind the camera of Tim Story, an experienced filmmaker (we owe him the recent Tom & Jerry and the diptychs on ride-along And Fantastic Four) who never endowed his projects with a real personality. We are far from Jordan Peele or Nia DaCosta (candy man).
At least, there are accomplice actors who have fun in talkative and deliberately stereotyped roles. An often disjointed group which precisely reminds us that we must remain united if we want to remain alive in this type of story.
A brilliant idea does not make a film and The Blackening learns it the hard way. The effort would no doubt have yielded an excellent short in anthologies Tales from the Hood. Except that in the long format, we will only retain a few rather gratifying meta moments to better forget everything else.
Indoors
horror comedy
The Blackening
Tim Story
Grace Byers, Jermaine Fowler, Melvin Gregg
1:36