The Blackening: Agreeably Silly Comedy-Horror Could Have Been Great

By Thom Ernst

Rating: B-

Director Tim Story has forged an impressive career out of easy-access comedy.

His latest is The Blackening, a comedy fashioned around the trope that in horror films black characters are the first to die. Incidentally, a study polling 50 horror films featuring black actors concluded that in only 10 percent of horror movies is a black character killed first.

But griping over the authenticity of the trope is missing the point. Not only does it direct attention to an imbalance of how black characters are portrayed in genre films, but when applied to a film where the cast is all-black, becomes a clever and potentially biting satire on which to hang a horror movie.

Who becomes the first victim in a horror film where the entire cast, save for a creepy one-eyed town hick (James Preston Rogers), is black? Answer: Whoever is proven to be the blackest. It’s in determining the extent of their individual blackness that infuses the film with its own brand of clumsy stereotypes, while gleefully embracing insider traditions.

It’s Juneteenth, the date commemorating the emancipation of slaves in the United States. A group of friends plus one uninvited guest wearing a black face mask and packing a crossbow, arrive at a cabin for a weekend reunion.

A hidden games room is uncovered and in it a racist board game which has as its centerpiece, an offensive and archaic black caricature. Soon the friends are pitted in a high-stakes game of racist trivia where an incorrectly answered question could cost someone their lives.

The film works, mostly as a comedy, never as a horror, but would work better if Story didn’t squander the film’s potential with an uneven script that fluctuates between extremes. At one extreme Story commits to broad comedy with jokes flying off the screen at a pace like—and with the same success rate as—gimmicky 3D movie effects.

At the other extreme is observational humour regarding black stereotypes, both in and outside of the horror genre. And though both extremes offer a few solid laugh-out-loud moments, much of the film languishes at the midway point.

Story seems content to deliver the status quo rather than risk taking the story to the next level. The Blackening is an agreeably silly comedy with flashes of ingenuity to amplify what the film could have been. Granted, some of the humour is specifically in tune with cultural references outside my experience. To that effect, the film plays well to an audience who, if they know, know.

The Blackening. Directed by Tim Story. Starring Grace Byers, Jermaine Fowler, Sinqua Walls, Dewayne Perkins, Jay Pharoah, and James Preston Rogers. In theatres June 16.