Blackout

2008
R
1h 25m

IMDb RATING

YOUR RATING

Three people from different walks of life find themselves trapped inside a stalled elevator. What at first seems like an inconvenience rapidly escalates into a nightmare.Three people from different walks of life find themselves trapped inside a stalled elevator. What at first seems like an inconvenience rapidly escalates into a nightmare.Three people from different walks of life find themselves trapped inside a stalled elevator. What at first seems like an inconvenience rapidly escalates into a nightmare.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

5.0/10

YOUR RATING

See production info at IMDbPro

Photos22

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Storyline

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Did you know

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Goofs
On Elizabeth's tombstone it says her last name is "Madox", but when we see her husband Karl in his car there's a closeup of his ID which says his last name is "Maddox".

Quotes
[first lines]
Karl: There is no chance. No destiny. No fate. There's only what you take from the world. And what the world takes from you.

Alternate versions
The UK DVD is cut by 31 secs by the BBFC to edit shots of sexual torture including a woman being raped and her breasts cut with a scalpel.

Connections
References La quatrième dimension (1959)

User reviews34

Featured review

7/10

Great Low-Budget Psychological Thriller

'Blackout' is one of those obscure little multinational affairs that can either be jaw-droppingly bad or a rare unearthed gem - happily, it's the latter. Three characters are trapped overnight in a stalled elevator, bickering and bitching as they try and find a way out while thinking back to the sequence of events that led them there. These 'Lost'-style flashbacks eventually reveal that one of their number is a vicious sociopath.

It's clear that Mexican director Castaneda is influenced more by the character driven horror of the sixties and seventies than by vapid eighties slashers, but his interest in people shouldn't be mistaken for squeamishness when it comes to ugly sexual violence - it's been a long time since I wanted to see a bad guy get what he deserves as much as I did watching 'Blackout'. Castaneda uses more than a few moves from the David Fincher play-book, with the camera squeezing through keyholes and cracks and plummeting down elevator shafts, and the whole thing is beautifully photographed, belying what was in truth a meager budget of only $4 million. A great psychological thriller from a director who deserves success.