I recently saw the movie The Blackening (2022), and these are my notes about it. This isn't a review, it's just so I remember what the movie was about, because my memory is just terrible (or my brain is too busy, or both?) This post does contain spoilers. Cutting to the chase: The Blackening is a great post-modern horror movie that starts strong, and then gets pensive, and then induces anxiety, then gets pensive again, and it manages to be funny and entertaining throughout. I highly recommend this movie.
A group of people who were friends in university reunite for a Juneteenth party at a cabin in the woods. Unsurprisingly, there's a masked killer determined to kill them each, one by one.
On paper, it's a paint-by-numbers plot for a post-modern horror movie.
The movie's secret is that it's only the setup that's cliché. The rest of the movie is wholly unexpected and goes against all the formulas.
The literal events of the movie all work really well. I had some notions of what was really going on in the story early on, but the filmmakers did a good job of confusing and surprising me. A lot of the plot beats feel like they're "correct" for a horror film of this type, but then it doesn't end up the way you expect. It never feels like the filmmakers are intentionally and boldly attempting to subvert expectations for the sake of subverting expectations. The story's progression feels natural, or anyway as natural as a horror movie allows.
The part of the movie that isn't directly the plot is what surprised me the most, though.
Seeing that the movie is listed as a horror comedy, and seeing the obivous setup, I'd expected a group of goofy characters doing unbelievably stupid things while in mortal danger from a psycho killer.
That's not what this movie delivers. Instead, you get a broad and even analysis of the state of black culture in the USA. I'm not black, so I have no context for what the characters in this movie discuss, and none of the shared experience. However, they discuss matters of culture and identity very plainly. Most or all of it is specific to being black in the USA, and that alone is afascinating to eavesdrop in on, but I think there's an opportunity for anyone to find kernels of wisdom here. I'll never be black and I'll never have the same life experience as someone who is, but there's a lot to be learned from people who have grown up dealing with oppression, broken promises, and duplicity. I've unquestionably made mistakes in my life that I can imagine someone with a different life experience would never have made.
I don't mean we should all be taking life lessons from horror movies. But this particular horror movie ruminates over so many complex topics that I think it weirdly exemplifies why diversity in friendships and relationships is vitally important. The most valuable life lessons come from people who happen to know, either through inherited knowledge or life experience, the stuff that we ourselves don't know that we don't know.
This movie has easily made it onto my rewatch list. I know the plot, I know the twists, but it's a pleasure to watch because it's well written, it's got great acting, some funny gags, and all the right horror tropes combined with oddly natural rebuttals. A perfect movie.
Lead photo by Anika De Klerk on Unsplash