Tim Story’s The Blackening is loosely based on the 2018 Comedy Central Original short of the same name.

The plot follows a group of college friends reuniting at a cabin in the woods on Juneteenth weekend. Lisa (Antoinette Robertson), Dewayne (Dewayne Perkins), Allison (Grace Byers), Nnamdi (Sinqua Walls), Shanika (X Mayo), King (Melvin Gregg), and Clifton (Jermain Fowler) all arrive at the cabin to meet Shawn (Jay Pharoah) and Morgan (Yvonne Orji) – the couple that organized the retreat.

When the group can’t find Shawn or Morgan (there’s a hilarious Scream 2 joke that breaks the 4th wall) they decide to start playing games and stumble up on the game room. There’s a board game called The Blackening that has a racist caricature of a black person on the front. Once they start playing the game, a voice comes on and tells them they must finish playing the game or they will die. The questions in the game are centered on their knowledge of Black culture.

The group must decide if they’re going to play the masked killer’s sadistic game in order to survive.

It’s been a few years since we’ve seen a good horror comedy and The Blackening is everything fans of horror comedies could ask for. It’s hilarious and injects the right amount of horror elements and tropes into the story. Even with the film dabbling in tropes around Black people in horror films, the plot points and jokes don’t lean into them too much – the screenplay walks that tightrope very well.  A lot of the humor is born out of the camaraderie the group has (or doesn’t have), the various group dynamics, unresolved issues within the group, and someone ingesting the wrong drug.

The set up for the film allows the talented group of actors and comedians to flex their muscles. A story that could easily be insufferable or a remix of the Scary Movie franchise is able to feel fresh and fun because of the talent involved. The laughs keep coming and get even better as the story develops. As bodies begin to drop, the characters are forced to make harder and harder choices that result in some of the film’s best scenes. Audiences will find themselves agreeing with choices made and/or yelling at the screen because a dumb decision.

The Blackening is a love letter to black culture and horror fans. It does a masterful job balancing horror clichés and jokes centered on Black culture.  Tim Story pulls it off very well. The mileage on how much fans enjoy the blackening will depend on the taste in horror films, comedy, or both. Fans will be surprised just how funny and smart the film is and how much they’ll enjoy it.

Grade: B+