JUNE 30, 2023
GENRE: COMEDIC, SLASHER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)
It’s interesting that the “horror comedy” genre is always referred to in that order, because more often than not, these films work better as comedies first. Much like last year’s Bodies Bodies Bodies, The Blackening is a fine comedy – I laughed heartily several times and liked spending time with (most of) the characters. But it’s pretty much a failure as a horror movie, and it weirdly forgets about the comedy aspect for most of its third act, so I couldn’t help but walk out feeling slightly disappointed, as by that point it had been a while since it had been all that engaging on either level.
In the film’s opening scene, the film offers (I think?) its lone meta joke, where Jay Pharoah and Yvonne Orji discuss how Scream 2 killed off Jada Pinkett and Omar Epps in the first scene because they were the biggest stars and the production couldn’t afford to pay them to be leads, before taking a beat and all but look at the camera to acknowledge that they themselves are now in the same position. Whether the film could have used more of that sort of thing is another story, but I had to chuckle that they name-checked one of the actual few slashers that really did kill the Black characters off first. In reality, Black characters noting their low survival rates in such situations is actually far more common than examples in which they are indeed the first to die. Just using the Friday the 13th series as an example: the original film doesn’t have any, part 2 has one minor (unnamed, actually) counselor who survives, part 3 actually kills its primary Black character *last* while the other one dies 3rd, part 4’s survives, part 5 has four, one survives and the other three are far from first, part 6 and 7 off theirs somewhere in the middle, part 8’s Julius is one of only five people to actually make it to New York (he’s the first of their group to die THERE, but that’s 80 minutes into the movie), Hell and X’s Black characters function as the most formidable foe for Jason and die last, as does Kelly Rowland in FvJ, and the remake’s Black character is 9th to die out of Jason’s (heh) 13 victims. So this trope, based entirely on slasher movies, isn’t even true ONCE in the most famous slasher series. And ditto for Halloween; while Black characters are more infrequent there, they tend to survive (HIII, H20, Resurrection) or die late (Halloween II ‘81). The closest it gets to being true there is in Rob Zombie’s Halloween II, which kills off Octavia Spencer third but only a few minutes after the first two (white) victims.
Now, I’m not saying it hasn’t happened outside of Scream 2, I’m just merely pointing out that we’re more likely to hear a joke about their survival chances than actually see them dispatched right from the start – which may be why the film, marketed entirely around this trope (“They Can’t All Die First” is the tagline) sort of abandons that joke around the halfway point. The film started life as a short, and perhaps that’s all it should have been, because there isn’t enough humor to mine from this one idea. Indeed, most of the best laughs have nothing to do with horror movie concepts – the hardest I laughed was a gag about how the rare Black characters on Friends were seemingly always either love interests for Ross or one of Chandler’s new bosses. There’s also a great bit where the killer forces them to do math to figure out how many things Nas needs across the lyrics of his song “One Mic” (“All I need is one blunt, one page, one pen…”), which had me chuckling heartily even though I’ve never even heard of the song. It seems to me that the (far more common, as you can see just from my F13 and Halloween examples) idea of how under-utilized/represented Black characters tend to be in mainstream entertainment (be it horror movies or hit NBC sitcoms) would have been a far better target. Especially when you consider some of the gags have nothing to do with their race, like when Grace Byers’ character practically throws up in her mouth when she suggests that they split up. I mean, we just had a new Scream movie a few months ago – it’s not like horror (specifically slasher horror) is lacking for metatextual commentary on its cliches at this time.
All of which could be forgiven if it worked as a slasher, but that’s where they drop the ball the hardest. Again, there’s plenty of funny stuff here, but never once did the villain come off as a genuine threat, which is fine if it’s an all-out spoof like Scary Movie, but when it comes time to reveal the killer and their motivations, there’s no comedy to the proceedings at all, so one has to assume we’re meant to be taking them seriously. But it’s nearly impossible to do so, because the actor’s *performance* practically IS like something out of a Scary Movie sequel even though he has no actual jokes in his dialogue. On top of that (spoiler here), the movie has by that point clearly established that they’re not willing to kill off any of the characters, having two of them survive major wounds without even pretending they were dead for a bit, so we get the slasher killer revealing themselves (and honestly, if anyone in the world is surprised at the identity, I’d seriously question their mental facilities, as it’s obvious before they even arrive at the cabin let alone start trying to kill anyone) to nearly the entire cast, having failed to actually kill any of them (save Pharoah and Orji in the opening sequence) along the way. That their plot hinged on predicting how the others would answer a particular question adds a layer of silliness to the whole thing, undercutting the fact that at the heart of their motivation is something that is actually quite interesting (the idea of someone “not being Black enough”) and deserved a better plot to be tied to.
Of course, I try to remember two key details. One is that I’m white, so maybe there's some stuff I simply don't have the proper experience to appreciate and in turn I should shut up about these things (fair!). The other is that I’m a horror fan more than a comedy fan, so it’s not surprising I’d expect more from that half of the equation and in turn feel more disappointed that it didn’t deliver. If you’re just in the mood for a comedy, with likable characters and a unique premise (for the comedy genre), it should do the trick just fine. Again, I laughed a lot (though mostly in the first half) and enjoyed spending time with these folks, particularly Byers and Melvin Gregg as King, a former tough guy who has “gone all Gandhi”. In this sendup of the “Black guy dies first” trope from slashers, it’s ironic that one nearly universal downside of such films – that the characters are all wafer thin at best – is actually not an issue here, as we get plenty about their history with each other, where they are in their lives now, etc. It almost made me wish we could have gotten a prologue showing them in their younger days, which could have helped some of the awkward exposition but also maybe could have established the killer’s backstory earlier, since it’s all clumsily dropped out of nowhere in the final 15 minutes (seriously, I’m somewhat stunned that Scream VI no longer has the weakest slasher reveal of the year, when it was already one of the weakest in decades).
Tim Story and writers Tracy Oliver and Dewayne Perkins (who is also in the movie) did a solid job in making a hangout comedy with some on point and delightfully random jabs at White vs Black culture (I don’t even know if it’s really a thing, but I was endlessly amused that the “whitest” Black guy is partially denoted as such because he uses an Android instead of an iPhone). But I was sold on a Scream-like slasher, and best I can tell, the only ones they’ve seen are Scream 2 and, of all things, Just Before Dawn. Had they been as successful in that department, this could have been an all-timer, instead of, you know, just OK/pretty good. But then again, a pretty good comedy in theaters* is rare enough these days, so overall I will still give it a pass.
What say you?
*Though it's actually already on VOD, because this is the modern world where if a movie doesn't make $100m on opening weekend it's considered a failure and shipped to the studio's streamer of choice in less than a month.
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