The Black­en­ing review – a nov­el take on the hor­ror parody

Even in a tur­bu­lent indus­try hor­ror movies con­tin­ue to draw audi­ences. Per­haps more than any oth­er type of film, part of the hor­ror view­ing expe­ri­ence is enjoy­ing (and at times eye-rolling) the inevitable tropes that pow­er any slash­er flick. The fake-out jump scares, the creepy house with a mys­te­ri­ous past; the list goes on. One cliché that lives on in infamy is that the token black char­ac­ter will usu­al­ly be the first to die. It’s an indi­ca­tion of their con­tin­ued expend­abil­i­ty to both the plot and the audi­ence as a whole; as sure as there will be a final girl, there will be a black char­ac­ter who dies before we’ve even got­ten to know them. It’s this premise that is glee­ful­ly skew­ered in the hor­ror com­e­dy, The Black­en­ing, direct­ed by Tim Sto­ry (Ride Along) and writ­ten by Tra­cy Oliv­er (Girls Trip) and Emmy-nom­i­nat­ed Dewayne Perkins.

A group of black friends reunite for a June­teenth week­end cel­e­bra­tion at a cab­in in the woods and stum­ble across a game called The Black­en­ing, fea­tur­ing a racist Sam­bo char­ac­ter, who demands, à la Jig­saw, that the friends take part in a game to prove their black­ness and sur­vive a twist­ed killer in their midst. What fol­lows is a fun romp that’s not always the most sophis­ti­cat­ed in its deliv­ery, but the jokes come thick, fast and just sharp enough to grab the laughs throughout.

The black expe­ri­ence of liv­ing with a height­ened sense of dan­ger often trans­lates into bold asser­tions of com­mon sense as we wit­ness count­less white char­ac­ters stum­ble into cer­tain death through poor deci­sions in the name of curios­i­ty. Oliv­er and Perkins skil­ful­ly exploit this under­stand­ing as the friends fight­ing against this self-aware­ness deliv­er a ripe source of amuse­ment, paired well with debates around the mark­ers of black­ness (do you know how many sea­sons of The Fresh Prince fea­tured ​‘dark-skinned’ Aunt Viv?); all mak­ing for a buzzy watch that brings the view­er right into the action.

With the arrival of The Black­en­ing, and its cen­ter­ing of the black per­spec­tive through hor­ror, it’s hard not to acknowl­edge Get Out, Jor­dan Peele’s 2017 mod­ern hor­ror mas­ter­piece. The film undoubt­ed­ly enriched the genre and allowed more Black voic­es to become a part of hor­ror than ever before, yet sub­se­quent attempts in both film and tele­vi­sion have been of vary­ing qual­i­ty. Remi Weekes’ thrilling 2020 hor­ror His House pro­vid­ed anoth­er sol­id reimag­in­ing, but Amazon’s 2021 series Them; dealt more in trau­ma than any­thing trans­for­ma­tive. With its satir­i­cal silli­ness, The Black­en­ing lands favourably on this ever-expand­ing scale. In fact, The Black­en­ing feels more rem­i­nis­cent of Scary Movie, the 00s hor­ror com­e­dy fran­chise penned by Mar­lon and Shawn Wayans, although Oliv­er and Perkins shed much of the hyper low-brow, often offen­sive sig­na­ture humour of the peri­od, while retain­ing the slap­stick spir­it and retool­ing with social com­men­tary that feels fresh.

Bol­stered by an enter­tain­ing cast, includ­ing Insecure’s Yvonne Orji, SNL’s Jay Pharoh, and Perkins him­self as the stand­out, The Black­en­ing turns one of horror’s most prob­lem­at­ic tropes on its head and gets jus­tice for all those black char­ac­ters we nev­er got to know.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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