Movie Review: 'The Blackening'

The Blackening (2023)

Directed by Tim Story

Written by Tracy Oliver, Dewayne Perkins

Starring Grace Byers, Jermaine Fowler, Melvin Gregg, X Mayo, Sinqua Walls

Release Date June 16th, 2023

Published June 19th, 2023

The Blackening is a very funny and refreshing take on horror comedy. From the clever mind of director Tim Story and star/co-screenwriter Dewayne Perks, along with Tracy Oliver, The Blackening takes on numerous horror tropes and puts a new, exciting and often very funny twist on them. This is more than just because the cast is black, it's because the treatment of those well-worn tropes is inventive and really funny. The characters are unique and yet familiar, falling in line with classic horror tropes while upending the tropes with smart dialogue and clever sequences.

The Blackening opens on a cabin the woods. Morgan (Yvonne Orji), and her boyfriend, Shawn (Jay Pharoah), engage in a series of meta-jokes as they come face to face with a bizarre and deeply problematic board game called The Blackening. Forced to play the game by some unseen bystander, the couple engage in the game and fail almost immediately when neither can name a black character who survived a well-known horror movie. The meta of the moment comes when Orji theorizes that Omar Epps and Jada Pinkett were killed off first in Scream 2 because they were big names that the production could not afford. Orji and Pharoah being, arguably, the best-known members of this cast, deliver this dialogue with a terrific comic knowingness.

The rest of their party arrives soon after, though Morgan and Shawn are nowhere to be found. Arriving first are the threesome of Allison (Grace Byers), Lisa (Antoinette Robinson), and Dewayne (Dewayne Perkins). They have come for what is supposed to be a weekend of drugs, alcohol and college debauchery in honor of a 10-year college reunion. Lisa, however, has a secret motive. She's reconnected with her college boyfriend, Nnamdi (Sinqua Walls), much to the aggravation of Dewayne who recalls the number of times that Nnamdi cheated on his best friend.

Later arriving is King (Melvin Gregg), a former thug, according to the dialogue, not my interpretation, King is now a man of peace and Zen who makes a point of mentioning that he's married to a white woman. That will become kind of important in one of the film's standout comic horror moments. The final guests arriving are Shanika (X May0), the absolute scene stealer of The Blackening, and Clifton (Jermaine Fowler), someone who may or may not have actually been invited to this reunion. He claims he was invited by Morgan but since she's MIA, there is no way to prove that.

Cast your votes now on whether or not you find Clifton to be suspicious or not. He did vote for Trump... twice. The stand out comic centerpiece of The Blackening comes when the group is confronted by that racist board game that I mentioned earlier. The game challenges the group to decide who the 'blackest' person in the room is. Each then makes a case as to how they are less black than others by citing personal qualities. The scene is fast paced and filled with terrific comic performances, impeccable timing and a terrific upping of the ante throughout.

That's just one of several very funny and inventive twists on the horror comedy genre. The Blackening is, in many ways, a traditional horror movie. Tim Story and his screenwriting partners make sure to ground the movie in the familiar reality of a horror movie before letting the characters loose to be funny amid the chaos of fighting for their lives against more than one psycho killer with a crossbow. The crossbow is a clever choice and never fails to be a source of shock as arrows come silently flying into a scene narrowly missing or occasionally striking one of our heroes.

The arrows even have a comic moment, but I won't spoil it here. It's one of many terrific gags in this sensational horror comedy. The Blackening does a terrific job of paying tribute to the horror of the past while cutting its own comedy horror path. While echoes of school reunion horror movies and cabin in the woods horror movies abound, the movie never lingers on homage for too long. It keeps the pace quick and the comedy crosses over with the horror in a fashion that is light and fast but still capable of being tense and jump scary.

The Blackening is a terrific horror movie and among the funniest movies of 2023. It's a deft mix of horror and comedy where the comedy is never forced. The comedy comes from the characters. It's a natural outgrowth of the situation they are in and how these characters deal with something horrific happening around them. It's broad, to be sure, but the horror setting still feels grounded thanks to the terrific setting and the execution of the horror elements which is spot on. It's a terrific movie and I highly recommend The Blackening.

Find my archive of more than 20 years and nearly 2000 movie reviews at SeanattheMovies.blogspot.com. Find my modern review archive on my Vocal Profile, linked here. Follow me on Twitter at PodcastSean. Follow the archive blog on Twitter at SeanattheMovies. Listen to me talk about movies on the Everyone's a Critic Movie Review Podcast. If you have enjoyed what you have read, consider subscribing to my writing here on Vocal. If you'd like to support my writing, you can do so by making a monthly pledge or by leaving a one time tip.

New offer: I am now accepting requests for movie reviews via my Ko-Fi account. For a $10.00 donation, I will review the movie of your choice. I cannot promise a positive review, but I will make it as entertaining and informative as possible. All donations will go to support my book project, Horror in the 90s, an exhaustive history of the horror genre in the 1990s. I've already begun writing pieces for the book that I have been serializing on Horror.Media. But I cannot finish the book without support. Make a donation to Horror in the 90s on my Ko-Fi page or here on Vocal and I will give you a shout out in the book when it comes out. Thanks!