Black Comedy

The first I heard about The Blackening (2022) was the tagline: "We can't all die first". That was all I needed to convince me.

It starts with a young black couple coming to a secluded house in Marin (according to the travel montage). They are preparing for a Juneteenth reunion with their college friends group. In the (ominously locked, then unlocked) game room, they find a game called "The Blackening". It features a blackface Sambo caricature that asks black trivia questions. When the guy answers one wrong, he gets a crossbow bolt through the neck. The woman tries to escape, but is pulled back.

Then we meet the rest of the crew driving up. DeWayne Perkins, a typical gay best friend, is driving two of his friends Grace Byers and Antoinette Robinson, who don't want him to know they've invited Byers oft-cheating boyfriend. When Perkins starts asking, "Who all's going to be there?", I get it. Comic Brandi Brown does a bit about always asking this before going to any party or gathering.

X Mayo is driving up separately and meets a very geeky fellow student Jermaine Fowler at a country store. His car broke down, and Mayo very reluctantly drive him up. When they all arrive, they find Melvin Gregg being interrogated by a white park ranger, who didn't expect to see black people in these parts. He came up with Byers' ex(?)-boyfriend, Sinqua Walls.

They settle into house (cabin in the woods), and start the party with some drinks, some smokes, maybe a molly or two, and some cut-throat Spades. Then they find the game room, and The Blackening game. 

The movie is partly based on horror/black horror tropes - Black guy dies first, never split up, don't go down in the basement, etc. They do reluctantly split up, amd one group meets the white ranger. When they tell him they split up, he says, "But you're black!". The Blackening's trivia questions are tests of basic black knowledge: name 25 black inventions, sing all the verses of the Black National Anthem, name the 5 black actors who appeared on Friends. (The correct answer to the last is "I don't watch that white shit.")

But it's also based on the range of black characters: gay friend, successful businesswoman, slightly dangerous bad boy, party girl, African from Africa, and even a geeky loser who voted for Trump. The message is: There's many ways to be black. And none of them are safe from the police.

Maybe I liked this because it was pretty tame, both in scares and racial politics. I got most of the jokes, although I probably missed a bunch too, due to whiteness. Any way, I picked up my copy at the local library book (and DVD) sale, and am proud to have it in my collection