The original "Scream," released in 1996, was a blast of fresh air precisely because of its masterful recontextualizing of what had become a staid, if not utterly stale, genre, reinvigorating it with a clever blend of meta-based comedy, and suspense, so as to make something that felt new and bewitching (nevermind the lethal overstaying of the franchise's further installments, a fate which befalls many a successful horror flick these days).
Tim Story's "The Blackening," about a group of Black friends from college, reuniting for a Juneteenth celebration at a remote house in the woods, uses a similar sort of formula, only in place of satirizing genre convention, the film is remarkably salient on issues of race and culture, even as it offers up a walloping good time in doing so.
We know something is off about this house minutes into the film, as an early arriving couple (Yvonne Orji and Jay Pharoah) discover a previously locked "Game Room" that houses, among other board games and the like, a large black box containing a game called "Blackening." Inside is a plastic game-piece hub with a deeply offensive caricature of a black face (they instantly dub it "Sambo"). Once activated, a voice comes from the speaker underneath it demanding they answer a trivia question or die. In order to survive, they have to name a horror movie in which any Black characters survive. Unable to, they are met with instant deadly response.
The scene, funny at times, scary at others, while probing the relationship between Black representation in culture, and the ways Black characters are so often subjugated to white-bread fantasies of their impending doom, is emblematic of the way Story, working from a lively, whipsmart screenplay by Tracy Oliver and Dewayne Perkins (who also performs in the film), embraces the complexities of race with a knowing nod, and a madcap bent.
Eventually, the rest of the crew arrives. There's Allison (Grace Byers), a biracial woman, reliably heckled about her supposed whiteness; Lisa (Antoinette Robertson), now an accomplished lawyer, who has just reunited with her former college flame, Nnamdi (Sinqua Walls), a personal trainer who spent much of his college years cheating on her, but who now promises to have reformed; Dewayne (Perkins), the gay friend who always had to attend to Lisa after Nnamdi broke her heart, now furious at having found them suddenly back together; Shanika (X Mayo), a bawdy woman who knows how to have fun; King (Melvin Gregg), a former gangbanger, now settled down with a white wife (whom we never meet); and, finally, Clifton (Jermaine Fowler), another college acquaintance from somewhat outside their normal friend group.
Settling down for a weekend of heavy drug use, partying down, and playing Spades, the group is soon unnerved by various creaks and groans, and suddenly open windows. Sometimes doors to the various rooms are locked tight, other times they're open. By the time they get to the "Game Room" and engage with the same board game, they are already prepared for things to turn terrifying.
This time, the game demands they play as a group, answering a series of questions they only have 60 seconds to answer (topics include Sojourner Truth, the Black National Anthem, "Fresh Prince of Bel Air" trivia, and, more damningly, a recounting of all the Black actors and actresses who ever appeared on "Friends"), but too late they realize the game is hopelessly stacked against them.
Eventually, they are forced to divide into two groups, one braving the woods outside, where they hope to get to a road and find help, the other, stuck in the house, with a menacingly large dude in a rubber-fetish picaninny mask, who terrorizes them with a compound crossbow.
The film is chock-full of comic cultural references -- "You gonna finish that quesadilla?" as shorthand for white-speak; the extended lyrics of Nas; a well-placed Tupac quote; mention of "the sunken place" -- but never feels as if it's trying too hard to be hip and topical. In one moment, as the survivors are being forced to choose the one among them who they think is the "Blackest," one character tries to protect himself by announcing he voted for Trump (but they only become incensed and charge at him when he adds, haltingly, "... twice").
It's also loaded with gags, both visual (a repositioning of a gun in someone's hand as to actually aim properly), and more meta (they all groan out loud when they realize they will have no choice but to split up -- always the kiss of death in such movies). Somehow, laden on top of everything else it has going on, it also manages to balance a reasonably taut emotional journey for the characters, coming to grips with one another 10 years after they first became friends.
In short, the movie is a pip, a bracing rush of originality that gives one hope for the oncoming summer deluge. Before we find ourselves late in August, sweaty and heat-delirious, wondering where our time has gone, we need to remember films like this as a portent to something more optimistic ahead of us. Let's all enjoy it while we can.
85 Cast: Antoinette Robertson, Sinqua Walls, Dewayne Perkins, Grace Byers, X Mayo, Melvin Gregg, Jermaine Fowler, Yvonne Orji, Jay Pharoah, James Preston Rogers
Director: Tim Story
Rating: R
Running time: 1 hour, 36 minutes
Playing theatrically