The new trailer for slasher movie The Blackening is as horrific as it is hilarious
New trailer for comedy horror ‘The Blackening’ has dropped – and it’s hilarious (The Blackening/ Lionsgate)
The first trailer for comedy-horror film The Blackening, in which a group of Black friends are targeted by a murderer, has landed.
Using the tagline “We Can’t All Die First”, in reference to the horror-film trope that a Black character always meets their grisly end before any other characters, the trailer has given us a glimpse at “what happens when Black people get a cabin in the woods“.
The film delves into the theme, with the killer asking the group to “rank their Blackness” to determine the order in which he should kill them.
The trailer promises a self-aware dark comedy, with various answers for characters ranging from “Y’all can’t pick me! I’m gay,” to “I voted for Trump. Twice.”
The whole thing is started by a “Jim Crow” Monopoly set with a racist caricature at its centre. The Jim Crow laws enforced racial segregation for about 100 years in the US until 1968, marginalising Black people by denying them the right to vote, hold jobs, get an education or enjoy other opportunities.
The killer wears a very similar blackface mask to the caricature.
Other lines from the trailer include a “We have to split up” that is met with groans from the rest of the group, some action-packed fight scenes and a hilarious exchange in which one character asks another: “You’ve got Rosa Parks on your shirt, right? We should be sitting down right now?” to which comes the reply: “I mean… that’s exactly what she did.” This is another reference to racial segregation, and to the civil rights movement.
The film, due to be released on 16 June, stars Antoinette Robertson, Dewayne Perkins, Sinqua Walls, Grace Byers, X Mayo, Melvin Gregg, Jermaine Fowler, Yvonne Orji, Jay Pharoah and James Preston Rogers, and is directed by Tim Story (Fantastic Four).
Critics have described it as as “legitimately hilarious, tackling everything from obvious stereotypes to ingrained cultural prejudice within the group”.
