As a South Korean audience who does not know that much about the African American culture, I may not be an ideal one for “The Blackening”, but it amused and entertained me enough as a humorously self-conscious genre exercise. Although I am not that sure about whether I get all the jokes and satiric jabs in the film, I still can appreciate it as a silly but entertaining mix of familiar genre elements and some acerbic sociocultural satire, and I actually got tickled more than once as observing some of the most outrageous moments in the film.

The main background of the movie is a cabin located in the middle of some remote forest area, which surely spells a trouble to you right from the start if you are quite familiar with many slasher horror films out there. An African American couple arrive there first before their friends come, and nothing looks troubling on the surface, but of course, they soon find themselves targeted by some insidious figure once they come across a little old board game in the basement game room of the cabin.

After this unfortunate couple is promptly dispatched for not playing that board game that well, the movie quickly moves onto the next part of the story as introducing their arriving friends one by one. Everyone is eager to have a good time together in that cabin, and, to our little amusement, one of them is not bothered at all even when she happens to encounter a very suspicious figure while stopping by an old store in the surrounding area of the cabin. Sure, “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” (1974) is naturally mentioned, but everything seems to be going fine and well once they are all inside the cabin while ready for fun and games during the evening.

However, the mood becomes quite disturbing when they subsequently go inside that basement game room and then find that old board game in question, which is incidentally named, yes, “The Blackening”. Once they open and then touch the board game, they soon find themselves trapped inside the cabin by that mysterious figure behind the board game, who has a diabolical plan on everyone in the cabin. This unknown figure is going to force all of them to play the board game which will spring up one deadly question after another to answer, and their survival mainly depends on how knowledgeable they are about the African American culture as well as being a black.

Coming to realize how perilous their situation really is, the main characters of the movie desperately try to survive as much as possible, and that is where many of laughs in the film come from. It soon turns out that most of them are not, uh, black enough for answering all those lethal questions thrown at them step by step, and the movie cheerfully makes a fun of their increasingly absurd situation while also showing the considerable influence from a bunch of notable genre flicks such as “Scream” (1996) and, yes, “Get Out” (2017).

The movie is basically a one-joke comedy, but the screenplay by Tracy Oliver and Dewayne Perkins, which is based on the 2018 short film of the same name by the comedy troupe 3Peat, keeps things rolling as often throwing self-conscious jokes and gags associated with its genre clichés and conventions. Because nearly every main character in the film is black, any of them can be quickly eliminated as required by those genre rules, and there is even a tense but amusingly preposterous scene later in the film where several main characters must decide who is the “most black” in the bunch for avoiding not getting killed together in the end.

Around the narrative point where the identity of the menace surrounding its main characters is eventually revealed, the movie comes to lose some of its comic momentum as expected, but it continues to provide good laughs under the competent direction of director Tim Story. While you will be amused a bit when someone unwisely says “I’ll be right back”, you may also have some good laugh from a very typical but undeniably hysterical case of talking villain syndrome during the finale, and I must tell you that I particularly like a nice punchline moment at the end of the movie, which incidentally involves with why many African American people are usually reluctant to call the police.

The main cast members of the film play their archetype characters as straight as possible for enhancing their many comic moments throughout the film. While Jermaine Fowler and X Mayo are relatively showier as required by their exaggerated supporting roles, Grace Byers, Melvin Gregg, Dewayne Perkins, Antoinette Robertson, and Sinqua Walls are also effective in their respective parts, and Jay Pharoah and Yvonne Orji have a little fun during their brief appearance at the beginning of the film.

Overall, “The Blackening” is often funny for its smart and engaging juxtaposition of its genre elements and the African American cultural elements, and it surely deserves to be mentioned along with “Get Out” and many other recent African American genre exercises including “Sorry to Bother You” (2017) and “They Cloned Tyrone” (2023). Although it does not surpass the devious comic precision of “Get Out” or the no-holds-barred satire of “Sorry to Bother You”, it is still entertaining enough to recommend, and it is certainly something you cannot miss if you are looking for something different.