Given the clichés and predictable plot pitfalls into which most modern horror films fall, director Tim Story and his writers — Tracy Oliver and Dewayne Perkins — deserve credit for some cogent social commentary, and for trying to shake things up a bit.
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| With no clue where their attacker might be hiding, Lisa (Antoinette Robertson) arms herself with a heavy wooden candle holder ... and lots of prayers. |
On top of which, these are insufferable chatty idiots.
Not even halfway through this increasingly tiresome flick, one wishes everybody would shut up for 5 minutes, so that Story and editor Peter S. Elliot could generate some actual tension.
The setting is ye old cabin in the woods (although, as one character points out, it’s more a good-sized house than a cramped cabin). Lisa (Antoinette Robertson, a plucky heroine) and her long-unseen college friends — King (Melvin Gregg), Allison (Grace Byers), Nnamdi (Sinqua Walls), Clifton (Jermaine Fowler, badly overplaying his role), Dewayne (Perkins) and Shanika (X Mayo) — have gathered for a Juneteenth reunion. The sole items on the agenda: recreational drugs, too much alcohol, a bit of sex and a weekend-long Spades marathon.
(The card game, of course.)
(But yes, that choice is a bit on the nose.)
Pretty much before anybody can blink, they all wind up trapped in the “Game Room,” which features a game called The Blackening. The game board’s centerpiece is an offensively retro, three-dimensional, minstrel-style face … which talks.
It instructs them to play the game, which consists of Trivial Pursuit-style cards designed to test their knowledge of Black culture: “Name five Black actors who guest-starred on Friends,” “Recite the second verse of the Black National Anthem,” and so forth.
Within 60 seconds, for each question.
Failure to play along … will result in death.
What this septet doesn’t know — what we’ve already seen, during the story’s prologue — is that the first two guests, Shawn (Jay Pharoah) and Morgan (Yvonne Orji), arrived earlier, and immediately ran afoul of a hulking thug in a blackface mask, wielding a wicked crossbow.
At this early stage, the banter, bickering and arguments — as our heroes struggle to come up with each correct answer — is amusing, even under such macabre circumstances. The tone shifts when the final question is revealed: “Choose the Blackest member of your group … and that person will die. Or you all die.”
This leads to an increasingly shrill discussion about what it means to be Black, given that each individual has a distinct heritage and behavioral mode in modern society. Again, points for this diverse aspect of Black identity.
Alas, they make a choice … and this is where the story goes off the rails. Because that’s ridiculous. Although one or two of these characters might be hard-hearted enough — notably King, a “reformed” gang-banger — the rest simply cannot sell this moment … because what comes next is inevitable. The “game” goes into “sudden death” mode, and they all become prey.
From this point onward, the continuous squabbling and mordant asides simply Do. Not. Work.
Worse yet, in true horror film fashion, they split up; three takes their chances inside the house, while the other three dash outside, into the surrounding forest. (This, despite the fact that — as with the Scream series — these characters are aware of what one should and shouldn’t do, in a horror film setting.)
Oliver and Perkins uncork two twists, in what follows. The first is a mildly clever surprise, but the second — supposedly the “big reveal” — has been blindingly obvious from the beginning.
The characters are a varied mix. Lisa, the most “mainstream,” is a low-key lawyer; her BFF is the outspoken Allison, with whom Lisa shares a “sixth sense” ability to convey thoughts via expression (an intriguing touch with an amusing payoff, during the climax).
Lisa’s other best friend, Dewayne, isn’t entirely comfortable with being gay; the defiant Shanika, larger than life, has the most spirit; Clifton is an awkward but sweet-natured nerd; Nnamdi, the group’s muscle, has broken Lisa’s heart more than once, in the past.
Things turn positively silly at one point, when Allison has an unexpected reaction to Adderall. (Who knew?)
Diedrich Bader pops up a few times, as the aptly named Park Ranger White. Is he a good guy? A villain? An unusually enlightened individual? (“I know my presence in that all-Black space would be a disturbance.”)
By the time everything winds down, we’ve ceased to care. Indeed, this film likely would have flown beneath the radar, were it not for the genius marketing campaign — “We can’t all die first!” — which drew considerable attention, but has nothing to do with the story.
Indeed, the claim that “Black characters always die first” in horror films is a false premise. (Admittedly, they didn’t get the chance in many early horror films, which lacked Black actors.) A careful study of more recent genre entries reveals that far fewer than 20 percent of Black characters perish first: hardly scandalous. Indeed, it must be remembered that in the grand-daddy of modern horror cinema — Night of the Living Dead — the sole Black character dies last. Which was quite progressive for 1968.
And so it goes…
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