Antoinette Robinson as Lisa in The Blackening (2023) 
The group of young friends venturing into a cabin in the woods only to stumble on sinister forces is practically a genre in its own right. But the horror-comedy The Blackening breathes new life into the premise by making all our unsuspecting potential victims Black. Based on a short devised by Dewayne Perkins with the improv troupe 3Peat, The Blackening has been developed to feature-length with director Tim Story.
In his 1983 stand-up special, speaking about The Amityville Horror (1979), Eddie Murphy asked: “Why don’t the people just get out of the house? You can’t make a horror movie with Black people in it cause the movie’d stop.” More recently, the convention that ‘The Black Guy Dies First’ has got so entrenched that it is now the title of a book about the phenomenon, by Robin R. Means Coleman and Mark H. Harris. In The Blackening, the group is forced by a masked killer with a crossbow to play a twisted board game that makes them decide who among them is “the Blackest” and so will die first.
The movie doesn’t stop, as Murphy predicted, but it acknowledges the hyper-vigilance being African-American affords these characters, making them naturally subvert horror tropes with innate scepticism and tree-climbing skills – honed by running from the police – that the killers weren’t counting on. While there’s dumb fun in, say, watching our heroes improvise weapons with minds further sharpened by a potent combination of MDMA and Adderall, the film punctuates the playfulness with the real burdens of being Black in America. Once the violence and slapstick have begun, there are gentle moments of sadness – asked if they know a white person who would want to kill them, one character responds, “Potentially all of them”, while the arrival of armed authority is only ambiguously good news.
Though it speaks to some brutal truths, The Blackening is above all a riot. Though Jermaine Fowler’s nerdy Clifton, who horrifies the group by admitting he voted for Trump twice, chews the scenery a little, the rest of the cast have no problem selling the politically charged absurdity. Perkins – who co-wrote with Tracy Oliver (Girls Trip, 2017) – proves to be the film’s ace card, deliciously delivering sharply written dialogue. X Mayo’s hard-partying Shanika and Melvin Gregg’s reformed thug King radiate natural charm and never dilute the poignancy to land the punchlines. Ultimately, in this ensemble’s talented hands, The Blackening proves to be one of the silliest, smartest and most memorable comedies of 2023.
► The Blackening is in UK cinemas now.