Tim Story is a director whose been around for a while. He’s a director who has done comic book movies, and romantic comedies and now he is delving into the horror and comedy genres. He is working with Lisa Byers and one of his actors Dewayne Perkins who wrote the script. The story focuses mainly on a group of Black Americans which should be right up the angle of Story and all the others involved. 

Seven close friends decide to go on a vacation at a cabin in the woods, we’ve seen this before, in Vermont. When they get there they are inadvertently lured into a room with a board game in the middle of it on a table. A character from the game that looks like Sambo a Black stereotype from years ago asks them if they want to play the game. In actuality, they don’t have a choice. They must answer questions in a specific amount of time or one of them will die. Someone is shooting arrows from a crossbow at them dressed like Sambo with a mask and leather jacket. The group must put their bickering aside and try to work together to stop these killings from continuing.  Even though they don’t know who they can trust within the group. Horror tropes abound.

With this being a horror comedy, Story and company take a lot of horror tropes and makes fun of them similar to other horror comedies like the Scary Movie franchise. This movie is packed with so many horror references it becomes redundant at some point in the film. I understand the concept of what the filmmakers are going for but I got sick of so many of the same types of jokes and by the end of the movie I was completely done with this film. And it wasn’t that scary either.

Story assembled a good cast from Sinqua Walls to Antionette Roberttson, Grace Byers, Melvin Gregg and Germaine Fowler. And a couple of cameos I won’t spoil here. The cast despite my dislike for the film overall was very good in this movie. They bounced off each other very well. They all had very good chemistry and understood the material they were working with. The theater I was in laughed quite frequently at all the banter and bickering between them. It’s pretty evident I wasn’t the demographic the filmmakers were going for. 

A couple of things threw me off from liking this movie as much as others in the theater, I was watching this movie in. And those are, one I felt very upset about all the reverse racism stuff in the film. Story is a better filmmaker than that. The other glaring thing that I just couldn’t look away from is the fact that it’s so predictable. In particular, there is one character that is ostracized from the group but he has a backstory that plays into the overall plot of the film. I didn’t like this at all.

The Blackening is a specific film for a specific audience. After watching it I found that out first hand. That being said I still feel it should be a good film and it’s not. It’s racist and very predictable. Yes, this isn’t for people like me but Story is a better filmmaker than this. Most audiences will surely laugh at it like mine did but I have to stand my ground and say what I feel like when it comes to what I watched. It’s just wasn’t for me on multiple levels. I can’t say anything else.

1 star

Dan Skip Allen