The Reel Review
A group of friends renting a cabin in the woods for the weekend find themselves fighting for their lives after a maniacal killer starts torturing them via an unusual method. They must play and win a board game about Black history – or die – in this horror/comedy based on a 2018 Comedy Central skit.
The premise for The Blackening is cute, playing into the horror film trope where the lone Black person usually is the first victim and almost never the survivor of the story. So what happens when ALL the characters are Black? The film also gets some chuckles playing into Black stereotypes about white people.
Unlike the skit (see below), the feature length film, however, just isn’t that funny or scary – which is the kiss of death for a horror/comedy. There are very few jokes and almost no comic timing, wasting the comic talents of Jay Pharoah, X Mayo, Diedrich Bader and Yvonne Orji (Insecure). The hour and a half feels like an eternity. The cute gag, about the film’s death count, while predictable, is at least cute.
REEL FACTS
• Chicago native Dewayne Perkins, who plays Dewayne, co-wrote The Blackening with Tracy Oliver (Girls Trip). He was a writer for 2018’s The Break with Michelle Wolf.
• The film was based on Perkins’ 2018 Comedy Central sketch comedy by the same name.
• X Mayo (American Auto, The Farewell) was a staff writer for The Daily Show.
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