User reviews

In a creature feature, the atmosphere and setting play part of the biggest role. The apartment building and the basement setting are pretty weak. The opening was kind if interesting, but once we got into the apartment itself, the movie went downhill pretty quickly. There are very few quality moments in this, and the fact of the matter is that the story, acting and overall attempt at horror with this movie was pretty thrown together.

The CGI didn't blend well with the live action footage, and the creatures themselves looked wooden and lifeless. The girls were good looking, but none of the characters were given even a modicum of development in order to care about their fates. The frenetic pace of the action was confusing, and there The only good things about The Blackout was the musical score which wasn't half bad, and a couple of the shots were quality. Overall, a PASS!

Where to begin with this waste of time? The premise is generic - strange and hostile creatures emerge from underground to wreak havoc on a major city. The inhabitants of an apartment building are trapped and fall one by one to these creatures. The ending does not resolve the story in any way (I guess the producers are hoping for a sequel).

Camera work was average. Plot was generic. Characters were forgettable, some were annoyingly hysterical and made the same mistakes you see in every generic horror film. Antagonists (creatures) looked fake, cgi for them was horrible.

Basically a below-average film which adds nothing new. Watch if you want to waste 79 minutes of your life.

When i first read the movie title i thought it would be a nice movie. When i watched the movie it seemed like a disaster movie at first But it was something else

Negative: The acting was bad Bad scripts/dialogs awful computer graphics

Positive The womens look really nice, only thing worth watching this movie for.

The ending was really bad and i guess they want to make a second movie based on this one with a ending like that. Don't!

One thing that keeps annoying me in these low budget movies is that it looks like the characters in these movies have no brain.

Didn't really think this deserved a proper review. But people should be warned about a lack luster effort like this.

Very poor acting, uninspiring creature design that looks like it was conceived in the seventies, a boring and nonsensical script, a soundtrack that reminded me of the TV show 'cheers' in places, forgettable and unlikeable characters and a one sheet stolen from feast to top it off make this a complete waste of time thats not even so bad its mildly funny.

I hope this had been of some help, if your looking for a decent creature feature check out the 'The Mist'remake or 'Feast'.

I would love to write an eloquent, cohesive review on this film, but after watching it, I think my IQ dropped about 50 points. The movie takes place in Los Angeles, but the buildings look more like Chicago or Kansas City. The sub terrestrial monsters could have been rented at a local costume store, and the acting is completely laughable. The premise is that monsters from underground are coming up to wreak havoc on the city in general and an apartment complex in particular. My time could have been spent better picking lint off the floor of my house by hand. The only way I would recommend this movie is if you are considering having a lobotomy, watch this film instead, it would be cheaper.

I don't know why but I love this movie. The monster was "whack" but if I could find it I would watch it again. I guess to each his own. I just like the feel of it.

Okay, well I knew this movie was not going to be overly impressive or anything, and rightly so. This movie was bad.

The acting was mediocre at best, though in certain cases it was terrible.

The movie suffered from a poor story. Strange humanoid creatures suddenly surfacing inside a building because of some earthquakes and electrical blackouts? That doesn't really make much sense. And better still, the creature was really poorly made. So you don't buy into it at any point.

The best thing in the movie would have to be the music, though even here there was some flaws. The music was way too loud in most places, drowning out much of the dialogue. This might be a good thing, as the dialogue was bad in places.

There was a lot of things that didn't really make sense or come together in a greater unity throughout the movie. But still I managed to make it through the entire movie, although I was hoping for a blackout to end the movie prematurely! This movie is definitely in the low scale of the horror genre. If you got nothing better to do for an hour and a half, put this movie on. But don't blame me...

The Blackout was actually a nice surprise!!!

A bunch of residents of an L. A building end up having to work together to survive an "Event" that has blacked out the whole city & deadly creatures have risen from underground & are hunting the residents of the Ravenwood apartment block. That's the basic fun B-movie plot & i dug it. This is set on Christmas eve, which i thought was weird as the Christmas setting served no purpose really except i suppose to gather the residents for a xmas eve party? It doesn't look very Christmassy & with the constant hot & sunny weather Los Angeles is a strange place for Christmas in my opinion. Anyway, there's tremors happening throughout the city, all power cuts off & the ground outside is splitting open due to a weird event. All this chaos unleashes humanoid blood-thirsty creatures from deep underground to feast of humans. A really cool pure B-movie idea.

One of the really strong points of this Low-budget flick is that the big bunch of characters is simply just that, a big bunch of characters & there's no one main character here & that was a decent part as i could not work out who was going to survive & that never happens in the Horror genre!!! I was surprised by the end. Also considering everyone here in the cast is unknown & pretty much everyone who helped make this film never done anything else (as of 2022) makes the film feel even more like a little rough gem. Even the director only made this one movie!!! Although Blackout isn't Amazing it's still a lot of fun & with creatures that are created very retro with just a hint of CGI with their scorpion like tails.

Another strong point is the Awesome looking Creatures, these are rubber suits & only a touch of c.g.i for the clawed whip-tale & i just loved their look & it was old school. These black & extremely violent creatures are some of the best I've ever seen in a low-budget Horror flick!!! In fact these things are so Cool they deserve a bigger movie to be in or a bigger budget sequel maybe? But i wouldn't love to see those well designed creatures again.

Also the score is decent.

I liked the big darkened building that are panicked bunch have to work their way through to find a way out & away from the creatures that are stalking them in the darkness & the kills are really gory & Cool.

The weak parts are the bunch of actors they got here as the only pretty decent one was the mum of the group who is trying to find her kids in all this chaos.

But to be honest it doesn't ruin anything because, hey this is a fun low-budget Creature Feature so i expect cheesiness & bad dialogue & weak actors. With that being said, i think the film is still a very fun late-night flick. The Blackout is all B-movie but at least its taken seriously by the characters in the situation. I found this pretty good for a small scale survival horror thriller, it's a a decently made movie & tried for bigger epic madness in it's ending & done what they could on a small budget. I applaud this little film for trying.

Also the actual End is abit of a letdown after everything that happens but atleast it wasn't an obvious one.

All in all The Blackout is a decent enough survival Horror with some Awesome creatures picking off people & an old school feel.

What amazes me about this film is that it seems the director thought he was making a good film. It has a serious tone and the monsters were trying to be painfully scary but I agree with a previous reviewer that it looks like they were just guys in rented suits from a local Halloween store. I couldn't believe my eyes the first time I saw one of the monsters (or whatever they were). They looked absolutely awful and not in a frightening way. The head piece was very static and the mouths barely moved except for the awful CGI overlay. Additionally, they had a very bad CGI scorpion tail that they used to try to execute victims with. The writer didn't even try to spend two seconds explaining where these creatures came from. The performances from the cast are some of the worst I have seen but my biggest gripe was with the writing. People just don't act and talk like they do in this film. Now I LOVE monster movies. I eat that stuff up!! This one, however, was so hard for me to finish. I honestly don't know how I was able to sit though the whole thing. This is probably the worst movie I have seen in 2009.

Everything that needs to be said about this movie has been said in nearly all of the other reviews, so I won't bore you with details explaining how bad it is.

The only good thing about this flick is that it moves the Troma movies (The Toxic Avenger, Class of Nuke 'Em High, Surf Nazis Must Die, etc) up a few notches from their celebrated 'Z class' status. At least Troma know they make bad films and revel in the fact.

I'm glad I didn't pay to watch The Blackout, as I would hate to think of even one cent of my hard earned money going to the makers of this abomination.

I think this movie gave me cancer when I watched it.

I don't usually write reviews (good or bad), but after watching this movie I just had to write one. I know I could have stopped watching any time but I don't usually do that. I agree with all the bad reviews here (they're all true). But the thing I really found the MOST irritating about this movie was the music. It may have been good, I don't know and don't care because it was playing the whole time. You could hardly hear what the people were saying because the music was so loud. Even screaming was drowned out by the music (not that I mind that but it just shows you how loud the music was). I have watched many bad horror movies in my life (worse than this even) but this one was not only bad it was irritating as well.

To be fair the premise of the movie is a good one, they (the actors) just do not do it justice. They never explain where or how these critters came about nor why they have not attacked before now. The monsters are completely unbelievable as no living thing could exist with that many teeth in its mouth. Some of the scenes were so dark you could barely see what was going on. The actors are fake and you really start cheering for them to be killed. In some scenes you can actually see the reflection of the lights from the cameras in the eyes of the actors and in others you can see them looking quickly off screen to get their cues. I tried to be fair and give it a chance, but it was too hard. So if you want to waste some time, then this is a good film for you to see as it actually wastes the time you watched it, just don't ask for it back.

Well, i laughed, not bad for an 80's movie,,as for horror,,,, Porky's was scarier!!!! the monster was interesting, but scary no way,,, there was no reasoning as to what the " cones" where all about, and the ending,, still waiting. The girls where cute, and i thought the blonde died the most interesting. Overall, if i was really drunk and had some friends over,, this would be on the tube. Could never really understand how the little girl ended up in the elevator, last time we saw her was she not in the basement? How did the monsters get from the basement upstairs? What was the brother looking at across the ways? Wife and i had a lot of fun at the editing mistakes, that part we really enjoyed.

All things considered, if you're in the mood for a nifty little horror movie you can do a lot worse than this one. Considering that this movie stars a collection of totally unknown actors I wasn't expecting very much, but the truth is that the story alone is pretty good, often frightening and sometimes quite graphic. The performances leave a little bit to be desired (which probably explains why this is a completely unknown cast) but even the performances pick up as the movie goes on, suggesting that it's much easier to realistically play terror than it is to play casual banter and make it interesting.

On Christmas Eve, Los Angeles is being struck by a series of tremors, that start out as minor ones but increase in intensity. Along with the tremors, blackouts begin to plague the city. The movie follows the experiences of the residents of one apartment building, who discover that their building is being infested with a number of human-like and human-devouring monsters, who seem to appear in the basement and work their way up through the floors. The monsters are truly frightening in appearance and the sometimes chaotic interplay between the various residents trying to escape is quite believable. The origin of the monsters was never definitely explained. The opening shot of the movie seemed to suggest that they were aliens, although the fact that they obviously seemed to have broken in through the basement suggested that perhaps they came from underground as a result of the tremors. I suppose it's possible that they were a combination of the two - aliens who long ago took up residence under the earth's surface, and are only now emerging. The uncertainty around that is OK. I can live with some mystery - it makes life more exciting!

All in all, this was surprisingly good and provided both entertainment and a few real chills.

OK so not a great movie overall, yet still better than some of the stuff you'd for syfy channel movies. Characters are all one dimensional, clearly labeled, family, couple in love, couple in trouble, big guy with gun, annoying guy,the guy who can kind of guess what's going on, etc, etc. yeah the acting isn't all that great.

The premise -subterranean creatures coming up eating people and taking over, not that original but it kept my attention- with the victims you know nobody is safe. designs for the creatures look really cheap for a full length feature, but if you went to a Halloween party and saw some dude dressed up as one of said creatures, I'd be impressed. there were times when the tail manipulation was very CGI.

all in all, slow intro, some slightly interesting stuff in the middle , and a not so good ending. I'd recommend this is you haven't anything else to watch or to have a MST3K style viewing with friends.