Get ready to scream into laughter with The Blackening, a horror-comedy primed for the post-Get Out era of Black horror.
The film made a splash premiering at Toronto International Film Festival last year to raucous applause and three major distribution offers. Based on a 2018 comedy short by the same name, the self-aware, Scream-influenced horror-comedy begs the question: if the Black person in the horror flick is the first to die…what exactly happens when everyone is Black?
In the film, a group of Black friends reunites for a Juneteenth weekend getaway…only to find themselves trapped in a remote cabin with a twisted killer on the loose.
Any horror buff knows the drill. The killer is supposed to separate the group and pick them off one by one, generally getting the most melanated member of the crew out of the way first.
Directed by Tim Story (Ride Along, Think Like A Man, Barbershop) and screenplay and screen story by Tracy Oliver (Girls Trip, Harlem) & Dewayne Perkins (The Amber Ruffin Show, Brooklyn Nine-Nine), The Blackening skewers genre tropes and poses the sardonic question: if the entire cast of a horror movie is Black, who dies first?
Starring Grace Byers, Jermaine Fowler, Melvin Gregg, X Mayo, Dewayne Perkins, Antoinette Robertson, Sinqua Walls, Jay Pharoah, and Yvonne Orji, this film takes a tongue-in-cheek look what “Blackness” even is as the friends must prove who’s the “Blackest” as part of the killer’s twisted game.
Take a look at audiences’ reactions in the trailer below.
The Blackening opens nationwide on June 16, 2023.