Comedy shorts have played the role of the new vaudeville for years now. The short-film format serves as the modern-day Orpheum Circuit, a proving ground where expandable ideas and distinctive talent can be developed into feature films or a streaming series.
The latest heartening example of how, and why, this works? “The Blackening.” It’s a comedy with a lot of very big laughs. You know how often I get to write that about a comedy? Not often enough.
It started as a 2018 short film — fast, hilarious, razor-sharp — from the Chicago-based improv comedy troupe 3Peat. Now it’s a movie, and while director Tim Story’s full-length expansion has its lulls, it’s never less than enjoyable. Lots of good jokes, subtle and broad and in-between, riffing on everything from “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” to “Lift Every Voice” to the oldest slasher-movie tricks in the book.
Convening at a cabin in the woods, because nothing possibly could go wrong with that concept, eight college friends plan a weekend of relaxation, gossip, hallucinogens, fun and games. But there’s a killer afoot, with a crossbow, with apparent access to both the woods and the cabin itself, notably the game room.
In that room, a sinister game called The Blackening will either be the means of escape for these folks, or their doom. Communicating electronically through the game itself, the killer keeps the Black cultural trivia questions coming. One wrong answer, somebody dies.
The screenplay by 3Peat company member Dewayne Perkins and co-writer Tracy Oliver retains the juice and the banter of the short film while building out the narrative. Maybe too much so; director Story and the writers made the call to treat the scares for both laughs and, well, real scares, and create a backstory riddled with grudges for various members of the ensemble. The best of the “Scream” movies made that mixture look easy. It’s not.
To Story’s credit, “The Blackening” has the wits (and the wit) to remember this thing must work in comic terms or it’s just going to grind on. Everyone’s on the same wavelength in this ensemble, with standout turns from Antoinette Robertson as Lisa; Grace Byers as Allison; co-writer and co-star Perkins as Dewayne … honestly, they’re all entertaining, rattling through rapid-fire dialogue like it’s nothing. (Sample line, when a white park ranger shows up at an opportune moment: “I’ve never been so happy to see a white savior!”)
A lot of the jokes favor violent, crossbow-related slapstick or just plain violence; a lot more, happily, come from the hit-and-run realm of off-the-cuff, seemingly improvised wisecracks and trash talk and retorts that hit their mark and move on. It’s a hangout movie, interrupted by a slasher movie, and it works because it feels like old friends razzing each other while squaring off (and, against all slasher-movie logic, splitting up) against their new common adversary.
It’s not amazing filmmaking. “The Blackening” isn’t social satire on the insinuating, resonant Jordan Peele level of “Get Out” or “Nope.” But it’s very shrewd, at its best, on the endlessly fruitful topic of being Black in America, perpetually on guard for the latest white affront. And there’s a joke about the O’Reilly Auto Parts jingle that, if you see “The Blackening” with a crowd, will remind you of the satisfying sound of a couple of hundred people busting a gut in unison.
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'THE BLACKENING'
3 stars (out of 4)
MPA rating: R (for pervasive language, violence and drug use)
Running time: 1:36
How to watch: In theaters Friday
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