The Blackout

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.

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.

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'.

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!

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...