Metacritic reviews

The Blackening is tense, funny, and thoughtful. It’s a miracle when any movie expertly hits that hat trick but even more so when it does it with this much confidence.

Even if its cultural and artistic stakes remain relatively low in the grand scheme of things, The Blackening – whose enjoyment absolutely lies in the fact that it both knows exactly the confines it’s working within and doesn’t take itself too seriously – is still a hell of a good time.

As a horror The Blackening isn’t the scariest. But that’s not the point of this film – a Fubu satire smack in the sweet spot between Get Out and Scary Movie.

Not every bit lands and the social commentary is not always exactly incisive. Sometimes it is, though. When a character says they should call the police and everyone breaks out into simultaneous guffaws, the point is made — fittingly, with laughter.

The movie is highly entertaining, while being oddly validating and very funny. It cleverly weaves the horror tropes that it rebukes right into the narrative. And it’s done without slipping into parody like the Scary Movie series, where similar notions are skewered more broadly and, with The Blackening now on the table, way less successfully.

More importantly, the film specifically examines Blackness through the lens of whiteness, making a white man the enemy and showing how an outside force wreaks havoc among the closed group. The film jokes about Black suffering, but this is far from trauma porn. It’s a truly Black horror comedy.

It’s better as a comedy than as a wickedly sharpened thriller, making The Blackening one of those surefire “see it with a crowd” pleasers.

Even when the jokes occasionally fall flat, the ideas are killer.

Veteran director Tim Story (“Barbershop,”Shaft”) knows to keep the camera where the joke is –in everybody’s face — and the pace quick enough for The Blackening to skip along its well-worn path, making merry and making scary the way of many a Wayans Brother did before them.

The Blackening is content to make a couple of easy observations and move on from the idea. It cuts itself off from actually maximizing what a great idea it is. If a meta-horror comedy can't nail its commentary, horror, or comedy, then it sadly isn't doing much.