The Blackening (2023)

Expanding a skit by comedy group 3Peat, and riffing on the well-known horror trope of the black character most often being the first to die, The Blackening is a slasher comedy that I was looking forward to for some time. The marketing was pretty good, and the tagline - "we can't all die first" - was brilliantly on point. 

There's a small prologue showing a couple of people in danger, but then it's business as usual. A group of people meet up at a cabin in the woods, all there for an overdue bit of quality time with their friends during the Juneteenth holiday (a date that celebrates the end of slavery in the USA). Unfortunately, someone has set up a deadly game for them to participate in. That game involves answering various questions revolving around black culture, with a wrong answer due to result in great pain, and even death. It might be time, this time around,  for the "least black" main characters to be endangered ahead of the others. But that pits our characters against one another, as they start to prove their race credentials to one another, playing on stereotypes and clichés that are also subverted as things start to twist and turn on the way to a final act revealing the killer and motivation.

Written by Tracy Oliver (who has delivered a number of fun scripts in the past 6-7 years) and Dewayne Perkins (a member of 3Peat, and someone with a decent selection of TV credits to his name already), The Blackening is a film full of potential, and the first half hits pretty much every target. Director Tim Story has been in the game long enough to handle the material with a steady guiding hand, and the simplicity of the setting keeps the focus on the various friendships and rivalries within the main group of characters.

The cast all have fun in their roles, whether they're playing things broadly or allowed to be more low-key, and I think everyone did their best to ensure that the script was delivered as well as could be. Grace Byers, Melvin Gregg, X Mayo, Antoinette Robertson, Perkins (hey, if you co-write a screenplay then you may as well give yourself a part), Jermaine Fowler, Sinqua Walls, Jay Pharoah, and Yvonne Orji interact well with one another, and convince when faced with a masked killer, and Diedrich Bader is good fun as the aptly-named Ranger White, a character who spends a lot of time ensuring that his words aren't misconstrued when his priority should be stopping a killing spree.

Sadly, as is often the case with many horror comedies, the biggest problem here is the balance of the genre elements. There are some great laughs here, with the script often never too far away from a smart and witty observation, but there aren't any real scares or tension (decent opening sequence aside). Which means that the third act, where laughs are a bit less frequent, stumbles along to resolve everything with an underwhelming sigh. It's so disappointing that it drags down the entire movie, but there's still just enough here to make it worth a watch. And you have to bear in mind that I am saying this as a plain white Brit, so I am sure there are many African American people who will get even more out of it than I did.

A great concept, well-realised during a number of scenes, but it's a shame that there couldn't have been a better handling of the horror elements alongside the comedy. Maybe they'll do better with that if there's a sequel.

6/10

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Netflix And Chill: Bad Hair (2020)

With that title, the central concept (a killer hair weave), and the cool company environment that is the main setting for the film, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Bad Hair is basically another film just like Slaxx. Thankfully, that isn't the case. Not that I disliked Slaxx, not at all, but I just wanted another unique film that didn't feel too similar to anything else around. Bad Hair delivered.

Our main character is Anna (Elle Lorraine), a black woman working at a company that essentially feels like the BET version of MTV. It's an image-conscious place, and Anna is encouraged to change her image. That leads to her getting a new hair weave, which she soon starts to realise can control her as it kills people around her. And there's a chance that her boss, Zora (Vanessa Williams), has the same problem.

Written and directed by Justin Simien, Bad Hair takes what could be a ridiculous concept and uses it to make a number of interesting points. Once you've sat through this, there's a lot more to discuss than you could have anticipated. And I'll circle back to a couple of those points after mentioning the main cast members.

Lorraine is excellent in the main role, as timid and downtrodden as any other character I can think of from the past few years before growing in confidence and power, ultimately being dragged into situations by her hair until she tries to figure out how to change things. Williams is used well for her role, a bit more in line with her work on Ugly Betty than her other movie roles. Jay Pharoah, Usher, and Steve Zissis play three very different male characters, all doing well with what they're given, and James Van Der Beek makes an appearance that feels slightly incongruous until he reappears just before the end credits roll. Elsewhere, there are roles, big and small, for Lena Waithe, Judith Scott, Ashley Blaine Featherston, Kelly Rowland, and Laverne Cox, with everyone playing things nicely straight, kind of, in between the moments of fearsome follicle foul play.

Now to those points being made in a movie about a killer weave. As the movie started, I realised that this was an interesting way to explore something that, as is so often the case, affects women a lot more than it affects men. I'm not going to be silly and claim that no woman wants to be caught on a "bad hair day", but any hair problems can definitely throw the life of a woman into turmoil, particularly anything that stays there as a permanent problem. Just look at the shock some people still experience when they see any bald woman. This is enough to make Bad Hair more interesting than it otherwise might be, but it also layers in a commentary on the pervasive control of those who get a new weave on their head (which provides a way of controlling many African American women in a way that allows a dangerous plantation owner to essentially maintain a number of unwilling slaves).

Despite the comedy inherent here, Bad Hair is a fairly straightforward horror, and one that manages to do what so many of the best horrors do so well, provide a metaphor for some aspect of our society that we would rather glimpse in a mirror than look at straight on. It’s definitely worth a watch, and has potential for a sequel that goes further and gets even wilder.

8/10

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Unsane (2018)

Steven Soderbergh has a way of presenting familiar material in a way that makes it feel fresh and interesting, whether it's the more naturalistic and low-key fights in Haywire, the glossy coating that encases the trashiness of Side Effects, or the effortless cool that transforms many of the films he has done with George Clooney in the leading role.

Unsane is quite a standard psychological thriller, competently put together but not spectacular in any way. The only new thing that Soderbergh brings to the table is filming it all on a phone (and it's not the first film to be made that way, but it may be the first relatively mainstream film to utilise that approach).

Claire Foy plays Sawyer Valentini, a young woman who goes to therapy sessions in order to deal with the big problem in her life, which viewers are left wondering about. Has Sawyer been seeing a stalker everywhere, was she traumatised by a past event, or is her mind refusing to give her any peace? Things get worse for Sawyer when she signs what she thinks is a standard bit of paperwork and ends up committed to a mental institution against her will. She is determined to be released, stating that she isn't crazy, but that's also what crazy people say. And then she realises that one of the staff members is her stalker.

There's a very good central performance here from Foy, who is supported by Joshua Leonard (as the possible stalker), Juno Temple (another patient in the facility), and Jay Pharoah (also another patient), all doing good work. And you get a nice cameo role for Amy Irving, so I have no problems with the cast.

The script, written by Jonathan Bernstein and James Greer, isn't as good as the cast deserve. It's okay, especially considering that these writers previously gave us films such as, well, Just My Luck and The Spy Next Door, but it's often either not as tight as it could be or it's just too predictable. The ideas here are more important than the dialogue, this isn't a film full of quotable lines, but the fact that those ideas end up lacking a certain something is a disappointment.

Soderbergh directs with his usual level of polish, even through a phone camera, but he never feels like the best fit for the material. Imagine what De Palma could have done here, or perhaps M. Night Shyamalan. Having recently been reminded of her talent, Lynne Ramsay could have taken us further into a troubled mind. But we're stuck with Soderbergh, who does fine. He just doesn't make things as interesting or thrilling as they could be.

6/10

You can buy Unsane here.
Americans can buy it here.