The Blackening: Not such a much

The Blackening (2023) • View trailer

2.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for violence, drug use and relentless profanity

Available via: Movie theater

By Derrick Bang

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.

 

With no clue where their attacker might be hiding, Lisa (Antoinette Robertson) arms
herself with a heavy wooden candle holder ... and lots of prayers.

Alas, “trying” is as far as they get. At the end of the day, this becomes just another tiresome example of the “idiot plot” … which lurches forward, from one moment to the next, solely because each and every character behaves like an idiot at all times.

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.

The Way Back: Sports as life

The Way Back (2020) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for frequent profanity 
By Derrick Bang

Well-crafted underdog sagas are can’t-miss cinema.

Redemption sagas are even better.

This film deftly blends the two, with inspiring results.

Former basketball great Jack Cunningham (Ben Affleck, right) initially finds little to love
when confronted with the lackadaisical members of the Bishop Hayes High School team;
even so, he soon spots untapped potential in some of the squad members.

Director Gavin O’Connor has an affinity for such material, having previously helmed 2004’s Miracle and 2011’s Warrior; just as crucially, he has an eye and ear for the interpersonal dynamics of people under stress. Given that The Way Back dives deep into the self-destructive anger that arises from unfathomable anguish, O’Connor and co-scripter Brad Ingelsby are blessed by a stand-out performance from star Ben Affleck.

Jack Cunningham (Affleck) works heavy construction by day, just this side of somnambulance after having collapsed into bed, dead drunk, each previous night. He consumes a case of beer during dinner, spends the rest of every evening at his favorite dive bar — where it obviously isn’t good that “everybody knows his name” — and by day conceals straight vodka in his stainless steel travel mug.

He’s taciturn, withdrawn and quick to anger: a barely functioning, late-stage alcoholic.

Family gatherings are tense, more so because of the hostility radiating from his sister, Beth (Michaela Watkins). She’s brittle and critical, neither of which ameliorates the dynamic; we sense her lack of patience results — in part — from long-simmering sibling rivalry. At the same time, we cannot miss the pain in Watkins’ gaze; Beth nonetheless loves her brother, and chafes at her inability to help.

O’Connor and Ingelsby are patient; answers do come, but only eventually and organically, as situations evolve.

Absent some sort of intervention, Jack is on course to drink himself to death. Then, unexpectedly, the fateful phone call: from Bishop Hayes High School, where — 25 years earlier — he was a basketball phenom granted a full university scholarship. Father Edward Devine (John Aylward, making the most of his congenial gruffness) is in desperate need of a replacement basketball coach. 

Remembering Jack’s glory days, and unaware of the mess he’s made of his life since then, Father Devine offers him the job.