‘The Blackening’ is Happening

June 14, 2023

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Oh, by the way, which one’s Black? (CREDIT: Glen Wilson/Lionsgate)

Starring: Grace Byers, Jermaine Fowler, Melvin Gregg, X Mayo, Dewayne Perkins, Antoinette Robertson, Sinqua Walls, Jay Pharoah, Yvonne Orji, Diedrich Bader, James Preston Rogers

Director: Tim Story

Running Time: 97 Minutes

Rating: R for Language, Molly, and Bows and Arrows

Release Date: June 16, 2023 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: Based on a comedy sketch from 2018 of the same name, The Blackening follows a group of friends converging at a nice little cabin in the woods for a Juneteenth getaway. Alas, there are some bad vibes suggesting that not everybody is going to survive the vacation. At first, it’s just little things, like a creepy cashier staring one of them down in a convenience store, or a park ranger asking to see everyone’s IDs before they enter their rental. But then it quickly becomes a lot more explicitly brutal and racist, with blood on the floor and a creepy board game with a Black Sambo face right in the middle of the board. With a Ghostface-style voice, an unseen gamemaster subjects the friends to a series of ludicrous and sadistic challenges to prove their Blackness (or lack thereof). In these types of movies, it’s usually the Black character who dies first, but when they’ve all got plenty of melanin, it makes for a formula of reckless, satirical shenanigans amidst the mayhem.

What Made an Impression?: See It with a Dang Crowd: I caught The Blackening at its New York Premiere at Harlem’s Apollo Theater, which is pretty much the Platonic ideal for experiencing this type of movie. If it’s been forever since you’ve seen a comedy with a raucous, no-holds-barred crowd, then this is the perfect opportunity to reacquaint yourself with the magic of cinematic social bonding. Watching The Blackening is not the time to be self-conscious. So bring along your whole crew, and then laugh, hoot, and holler to your heart’s content! These characters were written knowing that they would be received that way, and they’re ready for it.
Black History on Juneteenth: The Blackening scene destined to become the most iconic puts everyone’s Blackness to the test with a series of questions about Black history and popular culture. The queries cover such important, wide-ranging topics as Sojourner Truth, the NAACP, and the two Aunt Vivs on Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. But then the gauntlet is truly thrown when the players must identify some Black person – ANY Black person! – who ever appeared on Friends. Bona fides will be tested, so feel free to play along … if you dare.
Blunt AND Clever: Parodies and satire of horror are as old as the genre itself, ranging from the silliness of Abbott and Costello and Scary Movie, to the self-awareness of Scream and Cabin in the Woods. The Blackening manages to lie somewhere in the middle, while capturing the best of both approaches. This is the sort of movie where the most prominent white character is called none other than “Ranger White.” But it’s also the type of movie where the villain is genuinely terrifying, with grievances that are taken deeply and seriously. And it’s also also the type of movie featuring telepathic communication that makes you go, “Yeah, that’s pretty realistic.”

The Blackening is Recommended If You Like: Scream, Undercover Brother, Cabin in the Woods, A Black Lady Sketch Show, Black Jeopardy!

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Rap Snacks

For All of My Life, I See a Lot of Movies. ‘All My Life’ is One of Them.

December 3, 2020

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All My Life (CREDIT: Patti Perret/Universal Pictures)

Starring: Jessica Rothe, Harry Shum Jr., Kyle Allen, Chrissie Fit, Jay Pharoah, Marielle Scott, Keala Settle, Ever Carradine, Mario Cantone, Jon Rudnitsky, Josh Brener

Director: Marc Meyers

Running Time: 94 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Typical Brief Language-Related Reasons

Release Date: December 4, 2020

My biggest emotional connection with All My Life came at the very end when we saw footage of the real Jennifer Carter and Solomon Chau, the couple whose story inspired the film, as it made me go, “Oh yeah, it said, ‘Inspired by true events’ at the beginning.” In between, I had pretty much forgotten the real life aspect, as nothing particularly stranger-than-fiction appeared to be happening. Perhaps the real Jenn and Sol’s romance was just as pedestrian as what ended up on screen, although I’m sure it didn’t feel unremarkable to them. Seeing as their story caught the attention of big-time Hollywood executives, it surely must have been passionate somewhere along the way. So I kind of wish I could have watched their entire wedding video instead, because what I actually watched felt like it was written by an Algorithm instructed to create “Generic Heterosexual American Rom-Com 2020.”

Surely it didn’t have to be this way, as we have a couple of fine leads in the form of Jessica Rothe as Jenn and Glee alum Harry Shum Jr. as Sol. Rothe is of course preternaturally charming in the Happy Death Day movies, and while Shum hasn’t broken out on quite the same level as some of his New Directions colleagues, we know that he’s a bona fide song-and-dance man. Let these two kick loose, why don’t you, All My Life! What I haven’t mentioned up until this point, but what is pretty crucial to the premise, is that this story pivots on a malignant cancer diagnosis that interrupts wedding preparations. So tragedy is hanging over the whole affair, but clearly this movie nevertheless wants to be about living life – ALL OF YOUR LIFE! – while you still can.

We need to see these characters doing just that, and we also need to be able to enjoy it vicariously. Now I can’t speak for everyone, but I can tell you what I was feeling, and it wasn’t vicarious enjoyment. Rather, it was a mix of confusion, digestion (or indigestion) of banality, and just a profound sense that I’m not connecting to these people. Jenn eats Ding Dongs for dinner at one point, I guess because it’s supposed to be goofy and quirky? At another point, Jenn and Sol dance in a water fountain, I guess because Friends is part of our collective cultural memory? Eventually Sol loses his sense of taste as a side effect of his cancer treatment, and that’s a big deal because he’s a chef, and that’s one of the few moments that I genuinely understand. This movie seems to have selected its name from the “Department of Generic Titles,” but I think a better idea would have been to go with the moniker “Loss of Taste” and then set everything in motion from that starting point.

All My Life is Recommended If You Like: Generic covers of Oasis songs

Grade: 1.5 out of 5 Meet-Cutes

This Is a Movie Review: Steven Soderbergh Captures Claire Foy Possibly Losing Her Mind in His Latest ‘Unsane’ Experiment

March 20, 2018

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CREDIT: Fingerprint Releasing/Bleecker Street

This review was originally published on News Cult in March 2018.

Starring: Claire Foy, Jay Pharoah, Joshua Leonard, Aimee Mullins, Amy Irving, Juno Temple, Polly McKie

Director: Steven Soderbergh

Running Time: 98 Minutes

Rating: R for Pill-Induced Distortion, Unsanitary Use of a Tampon, and a Violent Spree

Release Date: March 23, 2018

Steven Soderbergh has made a career out of messing around with the standard bounds of cinema, often in ways that could come off as a gimmick in the hands of a less assured director. His latest, Unsane, sets itself apart with its iPhone 7 Plus 4K cinematography (credited to Soderbergh himself). Smartphone photography is certainly advanced enough to make a feature film look as professional as it ought to, so for those who are capable, the smartphone option simply deserves to be added to the docket of available cameras. Thematically, an iPhone fits Unsane’s story of a woman committed to a mental institution against her will, as it compresses the depth of field and lends a dull sheen that lingers in the uncanny valley between intimate and detached.

Sawyer Valentini (Claire Foy) is a businesswoman rising up the corporate ladder, but she is haunted by a troubled past and feelings of loneliness in a new city. The nature of her job is never fully specified (kind of hilariously), but it appears to have something to do with customer service, and she also appears to have power to hire and fire. She has been dealing with occasionally crippling anxiety caused by a stalker . After one particularly bad episode, she drops by for a therapy session, which leads to her signing some forms, which somehow results in her being committed to a mental facility and unable to leave, as she has been declared a danger to herself and to others.

Sawyer’s circumstances quickly become too sinister for this to be a simple mistake or an innocent misdiagnosis, suggesting that a conspiracy is afoot. A staff member (Joshua Leonard) appears to be her stalker in disguise – has he orchestrated the whole thing? Or is the truth to be found from the most well-adjusted resident (Jay Pharoah), who divulges to Sawyer that she is the victim of an insurance scam in which the institution forces people to be committed for as long as their coverage will pay for it? Or is it some combination of forces, working together, or simultaneously coincidentally all ganging up on Sawyer? Of course, there is also the possibility that this could all be in her head, as everything unspools from her point of view the whole time.

This could be a formula for devastatingly unsettling ambiguity, but Soderbergh is not especially concerned about questioning the nature of reality. This is more just a setup for him to explore his particular tastes in psychological and claustrophobic thrills. In many respects, Unsane is satisfying simply on a lurid and pulpy level. Soderbergh does definitely dig deeper than that, presenting in stark terms how both institutional and corporate life can be dehumanizing, their loss of morals too easily justified with a sweep under the rug. Those moments of carelessness and lack of empathy do not usually result in ordeals as dangerous as Sawyer’s, but the opportunities for abuse are there for those who want to take advantage of them.

Unsane is Recommended If You Like: Side Effects, Shutter Island, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Gone Girl

Grade: 4 out of 5 Medical Forms