Horror Spoof movies have three jobs: skewer their selected trope, give a few genuine jump scares and make the audience laugh. The Blackening, released on June 16th, understood the assignment and has set a higher bar for this type of movie.

The Blackening was originally released in 2018 as a 4-minute short film by the comedy troupe 3Peat. The 2023 movie expands that short into a 2-hour movie. Like most slasher horror films, a group of friends go camping for a weekend and encounter a stalker out to murder everyone. What makes this film unique is that it’s a group of black friends on Juneteenth weekend who are aware that they are falling into a horror movie situation.

The prominent trope being skewered is both how black people watch slasher films and how we’re portrayed in them. As the tagline says, “We all can’t die first.” The movie wrestles with several deeper themes as well: What does it mean to be black? Who is considered “black?” Can black people trust white people? And so much more while still being hilarious. This film has so many inside jokes, from spades to how to make Kool-Aid, that come fast and furious while hitting like they are supposed to. 

The cast, Grace Byers, Jermaine Fowler, Melvin Gregg, X Mayo, Dewayne Perkins, Antoinette Robertson, Sinqua Walls, with cameos from Jay Pharoah, Yvonne Orji, and Diedrich Bader, is phenomenal. They pushed themselves to give believable performances, never once winking at the camera or giving any indication that the characters knew they were in a parody. You can tell everyone was having a blast.

Frankly, this film could have been a disaster in the hands of a less skilled production team; they would have used more well-known actors, forced more white characters into the story, and may not have let as many of the jokes in. Instead, they let this movie be exactly what it should be and it works.

I would love to see the team that produced this project do some workshops or symposiums with creators and studios to get more projects like this made. It was an original take on an old idea. Slasher horror movies are not my favorite type of movie, but I had such a good time with this one.

Keep the spirit of Juneteenth alive all summer by seeing The Blackening as many times as possible.

5 slashes out of 5

Thank you to Allied Entertainment and Lionsgate for the preview.