The Blackening
Cert: 15 | ★★★✩✩
Out Friday

This slasher comedy hybrid from Fantastic Four director Tim Story addresses the phenomenon of black characters dying before white characters in mainstream horror movies. A group of former college friends are trapped in a creepy woodland Airbnb from where they are pursued by a masked assailant.

Over the course of a weekend that promises to be filled with drink, drugs and more than a little resentment, Lisa, played by Dear White People’s Antoinette Robertson, and her friends find themselves fighting to stay alive .

With Nnamdi, Lisa’s former cheating boyfriend, and Dewayne, the young woman’s gay best friend at each other’s throats, the group must put their differences aside in order to survive.

To make its case, The Blackening parodies everything from Get Out to the SAW film series — the group is even made to play a board game with racist iconography by their tormentor who communicates via an old analogue TV.

In addition, there are laughs aplenty, and more than a little post-race discourse, but at the heart of the film, there is finger pointing at Hollywood for its treatment of black characters for, well, as long as Tinseltown has been making movies.

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A scene from The Blackening (Photo: Glen Wilson / Lionsgate)

And Story and writers Tracy Oliver and Dewayne Perkins clearly have a whale of a time in the process.

Their script references modern popular culture and horror tropes and, at times, feels like a prolonged Saturday Night Live comedy skit that’s slightly too pleased with itself. But in the main, this is comedy in its purest and messiest and I was on board from the get-go.

There are some pretty impressive comedic performances all around, but especially from Empire’s Grace Byers as social justice warrior Allison and Daily Show writer and comedian X Mayo as the no-nonsense badass Shanika.

The Blackening takes very few prisoners and has a lot more to say about race than people are likely to give it credit for. It is pure spectacle and funnier than most horror parodies I’ve seen over the past decade.