The hype for Tim Story’s The Blackening has been building for months. Critics who caught the film at last year’s TIFF raved about it, calling it everything from “ingenious” to “intensely thrilling” to “fun and unapologetically Black,” and judging from this newly-dropped trailer (which features cutaways to a theater audience losing their damn minds as the film unfolds), those critics weren’t lyin’.
Let’s take a look…
Yup. The Blackening looks like a full-on blast. It also looks like the sort of horror-comedy we haven’t seen in quite some time, the sort that promises a goddamn party for anyone planning to see Story’s film in theaters.
Here’s an official plot synopsis, should you require one:
“The Blackening centers around a group of Black friends who reunite for a Juneteenth weekend getaway only to find themselves trapped in a remote cabin with a twisted killer. Forced to play by his rules, the friends soon realize this ain’t no motherfucking game.
The Blackening skewers genre tropes and poses the sardonic question: if the entire cast of a horror movie is Black, who dies first?”
The Blackening stars (deep breath, hold onto your butts) Grace Byers, Jermaine Fowler, Melvin Gregg, X Mayo, Dewayne Perkins, Antoinette Robertson and Sinqua Wells, along with former SNL star Jay Pharoah and Yvonne Orji. Highly talented performers, the lot of them, and the script they’re working from (via co-writers Perkins and Tracy Oliver) is said to be both razor sharp and hilarious.
Tim Story’s The Blackening will hit theaters on June 16th, just in time for Juneteenth weekend. Stay tuned for further updates on this one as they roll in, folks.
