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popculturebuffet · 1 year ago

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Junteenth Special: The Blackening (Patreon Review for WeirdKev27)

Happy Juneteenth all you happy people! It's once again time to celebrate black liberation with me, a man so white I blend into most doorways and friends episodes.

While the irony of that isn't lost on me, I do this because it's an important holiday that really always should've been something white dumbasses like me at least knew about. You'd think Missouri Schools would teach "This is the day we finally treated black people like people and not property".. but then again this is the kind of state where their once again attempting to pass a bill that bans "critical race theory" despite heavy opposition telling them "Stop this nonsense", so I really SHOUDLN'T be that surprised. It also taught Missouri keeping slavery as "a part of our past we're mildly ashamed of" and not "WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT. SERIOUSLY WHY WERE WE SO FUCKED UP. MY GOD CHILDREN. Now it's time for lunch everyone get into the cafeteria for some horrifying rice abomination with your meal. "

Still we celebrate and while Kev backed this year's review and had the idea to do one, I suggested this one as it's a film i'd been meaning to get to and owned, and one that perfectly fit: The Blackening. The Blackening is a 2023 horror film that most places mark as 2022 because it aired at a festival before delays. I go with the wide release in it's native country because that's when most people could see it, when it's marketed and when most people could consider it came out.

Pedantic nonsense aside, the Blackening is a horror comedy from Tim Story, who you may remember from such films as The 2000's Fantastic Four Films, Barbershop, the recent Candy Cane Lane and Ride Along. I wouldn't from the last one because I already spent one insufferable trip in a car with Ice Cube, i'm not doing it again. Are We There Yet? Scarred me for life... great work in Mutant Mayhem though just stay away from cars Ice Cube. And Kevin Hart.

The Film was based on a short by Dewayne Perkins, which I watched and was hilarious and the core of it was kept: conversational jokes about black culture and horror cliches, with the core of the sketch itself (Voting on one of them to die so the rest can live), being a key scene in the final flim and the joke of someone wretching as they try to say something stupid makes it into the film.

The result is a clever film about blackness, how people change over time, and horror tropes. While satrizing horror tropes isn't new, Scream 6 came out the same year, the way Blackening does it is clever, not overdoing it but having it be just present enough. And look i'm a sucker for meta meditations on horror: I love the Scream franchise and The film The Final Girl, so this film already had me but it also has likeable characters, a ton of great jokes, and a clever villian, while having some genuinely creepy stuff. While this leans more into the comedy than the horrror, the horror's still present and masterfully done. Check this film out if you can and if i've sold you enough. If you still want to go ahead with the rest of the review feel free but be warned full spoilers under the cut.

Cabin in the Woods Woooooo-oooo

The Blackening follows 7 close friends who went to college together reuniting for a cabin in the woods. And like many a thing, they lampshade how sketchy going to a cabin in the woods feels and with this, the mutilator, cabin in the woods and the evil dead franchise they absolutely have a point. And that's not even a fraction of the films with this sort of premise.

The group was invited by their old friends and married couple Morgan and Jay. Morgan is played by Yvonne Orj of Insecure (A series I haven't seen but want to watch) and Jay Pharaoh, who I have seen (for lack of a better term) in invincible as bullet proof and The Venture Bros: Radiant is the Blood of the Baboon Heart as Nuno Blood. Unfortunately for these two their the scream style opening kill, finding a racist as hell board game with a racist caracture in the middle and while having the sane reaction of "taking a picture of it".. are still stupid enough to play it and soon get taken out, Jay with an arrow to the neck and morgan ambigiously kidnapped. It creates a nice sense of tension. We know one friend is dead, one might be, and their walking straight into a trap.

We soon meet the group and since the Blackening has a LARGE cast and most of them live to see the credits, let's break them down.

Lisa (Antoinette Robinson from Dear White People): The calm rational one of the group. She's mostly defined by her relationships in the film, with said relationships being one of the films only arcs for the characters involved. This isn't a terrible thing as our friend group still feels real enough we don't need a tidy character arc for everyone. Still Lisa feels like she got the shortest end of the stick out of the cast and is mostly bouyed by Robinson being a great actress and having a great role in the climax. Lisa is best friends with...

Dewayne (Dewayne Perkins himself): Dewayne is a delight, an openly gay man (something that only comes up part way and casually at that but it's nice it's just in there), and Lisa's best friend. The two have a somewhat co dependant relationship with Dewawyne feeling he needs to protect her. He's also objectively hilaroius when he's not involved in sniping at someone we'll get to next. My faviorite gag with him is him getting introspective and weird on shrooms.. only for Shanika to point out he's always like this and hard cut to him dancing to 777 by Silk Sonic. Dewayne can be annoying though as he spends most of the film pissy at Lisa over

Nnamndi (Sinqua Wells, Teen Wolf, American Soul, Power): Lisa's boyfriend who she just got back together with after a rocky as hell relationship in college where he cheated on her constantly. He's genuinely trying to change but most of the group are worried it won't stick. Dewayne, having been the one there every time he did that shit, is especially a fucked up little whiny bitch about it. He has a valid point to be worried and to be upset Lisa didn't tell him.. but at the same time I can kinda get why she held off not telling him given he procedes to mope around the cabin and brings it up even when their being threatned by a killer. It's thankfully not to the point it gets anyone killed or gets super tiresome but i'ts just.. hard to care. The film tries to use this as it's core.. but it's far more intresting when the freinds are just riffing on one another than with this friend vs lover argument. It only dosen't bring down the film because Lisa eventually calls their asses out pointing out to Nnamindi that Dewayne absolutely has a reason to be upset.. but that this also isn't Dewayne's buisness, she didn't ask him for his help, and that she can take care of herself: College was a long ass time ago, she knows what she's risking with this and the three reconcile.

King (Melvin Gregg, American Vandal, Snowfall): My faviorite of the group mostly for his horrible "king's kool aid": which is Kool Aid with an assload of sugar and vodka mixed in. I love how proud he is, how he tries to hype it up.. and how he still does even after the Conesus is it tastes like ass. He also has a quick wit. He also somehow survives a full on arrow to the chest holy shit. He's also implied to be a former Gangster, but has moved on from that.. though he still brought a gun. But I like how they have one without it breaking the plot: it makes sense someone might have one for protection, especially in increasingly racially fraught times where stupid white people are especially agressive and obnoxious, but he has to use it to shoot the door off, thus leaving it out of play long before the killers meet them face to face. And yes I said killers, plural. The film may be it's own thing.. but it does feel very scream in places and I support that. He also has a white wife. That is used primarily for jokes which only works because the group in general razzes each other a lot. Not something i'm super comfortable with a lot but I do have friends like that who will take the piss out of each other, so I get it.

Allison (Grace Beyers, The Gifted): Speaking of taking a piss

Allison is for the first 2/3 mostly the "one they mock for being biracial" and the peacekeepr of the group, trying to help manuver the whole Nmandi Dewayne thing, though she's also aware Kim is lying through her teeth about them being just friends. To the film's credit though they give her more to do in the last part: she accidently gets high on adderal, so not only does Beyers get a lot of great material for Stoned allison, she also gets to punch one of the killers to death with arrowheads tucked between her fingers, think...

Shanika (X Mayo, American Auto): The most outspoken of the group and the only one to drive down alone, stopping a convience store to get glared at by a threatening white man, with one eye who naturally turns out to be one of the killers. I also applaud her for grabbing rap chips and generally being a lot of fun in her reactions to the shit going down. She tends to stir it up a little, but is ultimately kind and when the chips are down incredibly badass, taking one of the killer's crossbows and using it for herself towards the end. She runs into the final member of our party

Clifton (Jermaine Fowler, Coming 2 America, Superior Donuts, Murder at the Edge of the World): Clifton is the odd man out in the group. He's , to put it blunty, a fully grown Urkel

Jermain Fowler is hamming it up as he's awkard, nerdy, won't shut up about his android phone charger (which having had android I CAN relate to but my god man), and no one is sure why the fuck he's here as no one was expecting him. He WAS a friend of the group.. but it's clear they never really kept touch. He's honestly annoying, but is kept to the back a bit till the big "Whose the blackest scene". There's more to him as you can probably guess by the mountain of red flags.. but we'll circle back to that.

So we have our magnificent seven, who have a good time: they play some spades, a card game I hadn't heard of till watching L'Ron Readus' video on the movie (Which I highly recommend) but comes up a decent amount and is a favorite of the group.

Naturally the group start to get suspcious their friends are missing and eventually find the game. The film really uses the horrifyingly racist caracture well as it's the killers logo for when they pop on the tv and the voice they use for it is really hushed and creepy, using a very real very horrifying symbol of racial sterotyping to good effect. The masked killer(s) also use it, with black hoods, ala Black Christmas, but with white chalk drawn across the mouth because of course there that level of mother fucker.

So their told Morgan will die unless they play the game right and we get a great sequence of them trying to figure out how long second aunt viv was around. The answer of course is three seasons but it's fun to see them use things like nicky. It's also fun when asked something about NAZ's blunts, we see Nnmandi do the math on screen.

Eventually though the Killer, being a dick throws them a trick question: Name 5 black people from friends. I love the slow revelation that ALL of them clearly watch friends despite trying to watch it. White as hell the show may be it's reach is long. Though living single is the better show, let's be real, it's just not shown nearly as much as it should be, though I do see it has at least daily reruns on one channel and is on hulu. It' sa trick answer as the correct answer is "I don't watch it".. which is really just the killer fucking with them. As we find out later Morgan was already dead.

With Morgan dead the Killer decides to get vicious and forces them to pick "the blackest one of them", an expanded version of the scene from the sketch that can be hilarious but is also nicely cutting in places, as Allison calls them all out for trying to pick her when their constantly questoning her blackness due to being biracial, something that bothers her way mroe than she lets on and makes those jabs worK: she brushes them off.. but they clearly DO hurt and everyone noticably stops after this.

Naturally.. everyone picks Clifton: he was there supsciously as they quicly point out, isn't likeable and his attempts at proving how not black he is.. lead to him saying he voted for trump... TWICE. Yeah unsuprisingly they all vote him out. He quickly dies and even with the Trump thing, they do feel bad a person "died".

The doors are opened after Nnmandi destroys the game board, with everyone agreeing fuck this shit.. and the masked killers responding with "Alrighty then murder time". They didn't say that and what they were probably thinking is so vile and racist it makes me upset.

The group argue about what to do next; Stay and fight or go for help. Allison has the unevible task of suggesting the obvious but stupid option: Let's split up gang. I love how she gags saying it, how she knows it's the LAST thing to do in a horror film.. but both ideas make sense. It's also nice in it's execution in that for once it's NOT the stupidest idea in the world: most time people split up in a horror movie it's one at a time MAYBE groups of two if your lucky, which when your being stalked by one person, is dumb. Here the group simply splits in half to take two entirely logical courses of action: Go for help and take out the killer on their own turf while they have time to prepare. As far as they know and the film's implied there's only one killer, so it sends him after only one party, and if it's the rescue one they at least have a chance to loose him in th ewoods, and if it's the one at home, it's three on one.

So they split into two teams: Allison, King and Shanika go for help, Lisa, Nnamandi and Dewayne stay behind to prepare.. and thankfully work out their shit.

Team Allison ends up running into one of the killers and we get a pretty fun fight scene as Shanika beats the shit out of him, king at least stabs him once before that and allison wolverines him as mentioned before. It's a fun fight scene and a nice way to turn the tables: normally a killer in horror would've killed all three of them, maybe ONE of them surviving for a possible sequel. With the Blackening, the characters not only get to live but strike back. It isn't the only horror film to do this, but it's a refreshing subversion: our characters go thorugh a lot of shit but no one really had to die and they still lost two friends, with their deaths proving the killers are dead serious.

Meanwhile the other team runs into Ranger White, who looks suspcious as fuck but is as guilty as red herring. Ranger White showed up earlier to hassle king and be a white dumbass, and is our obvious red herring for the evening. And our only white guy. And Deidrich Bader who does a great job, playing the role entirely stone faced and being both a convincing asshole at the start, but his turn to being helpful if stupid here works. Sadly being mildly offputting, obestructive and finding the killers mask in the woods means he gets locked out of his own car and stabbed with an arrow. I REALLY love the killers use of arrows, a way to give them a ranged weapon that's still horrifying, see Shawn's horrible death in the opening, but has a chance of survival and makes perfect sense once we find out who the killers are, as well as making sense for our red herring: While the ranger HAS a gun, that could be traced a lot easier than a case of arrow through the neck. Not saying you can't trace an arrow through the neck, but you don't leave finger prints on an arrow. Probably. And you do if you don't use gloves.

Thankfully the rest of the party come in and Shaniqua gives Killer #2 a taste of his own arrow through the neck. They find out the two guys are the ones who rented the cabin and one of them is naturally the creepy guy from the gas station and I like how despite not meeting the killers that much before.. this reveal works. We never knew WHO rented the house to Morgan, and it was clear they were sketchy, and Ranger White mentions they usually only rent to families.. with our heroes outright saying the quiet part he's trying not to loud by adding "white" to the word. IT also explains the weapons: their hunters and their motivations are pretty simple: their racist assholes and being payed to kill black people was an easy pitch. As our heroes find out... someone HIRED them, meaning whoever was actually behind this is out there..and return to find Clifton's dead body.. and him pulling a billy loomis and waking up. Clifton was behind it all

Yeah I did get spoiled on this as I wasn't sure I was going to ever watch the film, so I watched L'Ron Readus' video on it and highly recommend it. You can find it here. It's what convinced me to buy the film and the reason this review is here, so I couldn't help but give a shout out. He's a great youtuber and has great mini essays on black and queer themes in media.

Even without it.. the twist is pretty obvious: no one really seems to LIKE Clifton and some of them struggle to remember him, he shows up abrubtly with a weak excuse his car broke down, and it feels VERY weird Morgan didn't tell anyone he'd be coming or would suprise them with this. Nnmandi being hidden made sense: Dewayne is a raging dick about it and might not have come. But no one was going to say no because Clifton was coming they'd probably just be dispaointed it'd feel a bit weird having someone they haven't spoken too since college there. It helps he feels the least.. real. Not because he's a nerd, that's entirely normal and King himself is a bit of a dork and even Dewayne sings the O'Reily autoparts theme at one point. Said gag is one of my faviorites as when trying to figure out WHOSE after them, she mentions an online argument where a guy got mad at her for saying the O'Reily autoparts jingle was more ubiquiotus than the natnional anthem. Which... I agree with Dewayne she has a point and I love everyone singing along to the "auto parts" part perfectly. Clifton really couldn't be more obvious if he were wearing a sign saying "I didn't murder anyone today promise".

It works mostly because while there are obvious clues he shoudln't be here, he could've just crashed and as far as we know the killer is a white man way too burly to be him. The film sets him up as a red herring.. then reveals him as the mastermind.

His reason for it is also brilliant, and is why the scream comparisons: like many a ghostface, his reasons are somewhat sympathetic.. but still so out of touch with what actually happened and who was actually responsible in the situation that you still want to see him die. He explains he had a drunk driving acccident... and is clearly pissed he has to lead them to the why: They were playing Spades, and he was bad in it since no one in his state really plays spades and rather than teach him, in his eyes the others were teasing him, with Lisa jokingly "revoking his black card". For them it was just the kind of ribbing you do during spades and they do in general, but Clifton took it personally, got extra drunk due to the pain.. and accidently hit a woman with a his car, getting four years in prison.

The thing is Clifton is to a degree sympathetic: it's hard to fit in and likely harder when your seen as "too white" just for being yourself. That you don't fit in and no one's really trying to help you. I've been there with the latter. Sometimes fitting in with a crowd is hard and it can be easy to take an insult way too personally: i have extra trouble with that. It's easy to see why what was just a joke hit him hard. When you have a deep well of self loathing and a bad need to be accepted , being seemingly rejected and constantly mocked can take a toll. I learned over time some assholes just aren't worth it while for others teasing is just how they react and they can dail it back. The group likely woudl've mocked him a little.. but don't seem so dickisht hey wouldn't of apologzied had he called them on it. And if he didn't then sometimes the hard truth is it's better to be alone than be freinds with someone who dosen't respect you. This group dosen't seem the type, but we see them as adults, not young adults, so it's hard to say.

What isn't.. is that Clifton took the wrong message. Instead of those.. the message was "They ruined my life, I wasn't black enough, they rejected me, they were the assholes" which again they kinda were, but it wasn't intentional. He took a sarcastic statment as gospel and proof that he needed revenge. He wasted the rest of his life trying to get back at people who didn't evne remember they hurt them instead of moving on: I've had my share of assholes in my life... and i've left them behind. They were far worse than the group here, but you move on. The gang did fuck up, I belelive that, but they all fucked up in other ways.. and as we've seen grew: Nnamandi was a serial cheater who constnatly said he'd change but didn't.. but is now really changed. Lisa is willing to give him another shot but is mature enough to know he's on thin ice. Even within the film Dewayne realizes he's been too overprotective of lisa and should trust her judgement. The group all cahnged and evolved.. while Clifton remaind the same angry kid he was blaming the world for something that ultimately was his fault. He drank a lot, someone died, and he drove into them.

Thankfully for them Clifton was dumb enough to lock two of them out, and while Lisa and co stall, their able to eventually disarm the asshole and kill him. OUr story ends with our heroes triumphant.. if not calling the cops because HAHAHAHAHAHA NO .. JUST.. NO. and calling the fire department because "they don't shoot people"... with bullets maybe not. With a hose.. yes. A goofy gag to end a great film.

The Blackening.. is excellent. It's funny, has some genuine scares, and nicely subverts a lot of horror tropes while talking about them cleverly. It's hard to be meta in horror as Scream has done a LOT of it and lead to a lot more films doing the same, bu tthe Blackening pulls it off with flying colors and is well worth checking out. Happy junteenth and thanks for reading.

#juneteenth #tim story #the blackening #x mayo #grace beyers #jermaine fowler #dewayne perkins #antoinette robinson #diedrich bader #film #horror #horror movies

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