- Directed by Tim Story
- Written by Tracy Oliver, Dewayne Perkins
- Stars Grace Byers, Jermaine Fowler, Melvin Gregg
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 37 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moiRCJR4ToY
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This was very well done and very funny while still keeping the horror elements. It touches on a lot of horror tropes, many of them relating to people of color, and pokes fun at them effectively. Good script, skilled cast, and we both liked it more than we expected to.
Spoilery Synopsis
Shawn and Morgan are two black people in a cabin in the woods. There’s someone creeping around outside. Doors are opening and closing all by themselves; Morgan talks about horror movies. He shows her a cool game room with a board game in the center called “The Blackening.” It’s like the most racist board game ever. Morgan is a little curious about the rules. She draws a trivia card, and they laugh about black people always dying in horror movies first. Then they look at each other strangely. The door closes behind them as the board game laughs. Yes, they prove the rule. Credits roll.
Morgan has invited her friends to the cabin for a Juneteenth reunion, and all eight of them are coming. It’s been ten years, and they all need some fun. Dewayne is thrilled to see everyone except Nnamdi for some reason. Clifton and Shanika run into each other at a convenience store and then they argue Android vs iPhone.
The whole group arrives at the house and “Ranger B. White” is there giving King a hard time. They show that they have legally rented the place and the ranger leaves. They joke that Allison has a white father, so she’s like the painting of a zebra on the wall.
King makes the sugariest Kool-Aid, strong with vodka. Lisa tells him “Diabetes is the blackest thing ever.” He then makes fun of Nnamdi, who never really changes. King, on the other hand, has changed; he doesn’t carry a gun anymore and he’s settled down married. DeWayne is all introspective and moody– until the Molly kicks in. Lisa and Nnamdi get it on, just like they used to back in the day. She’s cheating on DeWayne. Before long, everyone knows their secret.
Shanika arrives, and she brought Clifton with her, and he’s a nerd. Everyone wonders where Shawn and Morgan are, but they don’t get too upset at their absence. Everyone’s having a good time until the lights go out. They all wander around in the dark until they find the game room from earlier.
They find The Blackening game, and no one’s interested in that. Each person has their own custom-made avatar in the game, even Clifton, who wasn’t actually invited. The door closes and locks them in. The TV switches on, and the “Sambo face” on the logo shows us that it’s not broadcast TV. They watch Morgan tied to a chair, and it knows their names. “If you answer ten questions correctly, you are all free to go; if not, she dies. Refuse to play and you die, just like Shawn did.”
The timer on the game works by itself and the voice from the board speaks to them. They get the first nine questions right, but then the game cheats about the TV show “Friends,” which no black person should ever admit they watched. The game room door opens, but they can’t get out of the house.
King pulls out the gun he denied having earlier and shoots through the door, releasing the killer, who shoots King with an arrow– twice. “Are there any white people who want to kill us?” “Potentially, all of them.” They all get locked back in the gameroom with the game, and they are told to sacrifice the blackest among them. They argue about who’s the blackest. When Clifton admits he voted for Trump, twice, they all decide he needs to die.
The group sends Clifton outside and watches him on the racist TV. They watch him get shot and dragged off by the killer. They all refuse to play the game, so the killer tells them they are now in “sudden death” mode. They have three minutes to get out. Allison suggests they all split up.
Allison, Shanika, and King run through the woods while Lisa, DeWayne, and Nnamdi stay in the house to hide. Lisa’s group runs into Ranger White in the basement, and he says “I’m one of the good ones.”
Elsewhere, King fights the killer and loses. Allison takes Adderall and gains superpowers. She stabs him repeatedly. She takes his mask off and it’s the creepy guy from the convenience store. He’s the man who owns the house they rented. He’s also not the same man who was in the basement earlier– there’s more than one killer!
Ranger White leads Lisa’s group outside to his car, but they find a mask in his car and don’t let him in. As White’s trying to explain that he found the mask and he’s not the killer, someone shoots him. Lisa and Dewayne decide to talk about their relationship while hiding in an air duct with Nnamdi. Through a comedy of errors, they gang up on the killer and knock him out. Then they argue amongst themselves until he gets up again.
Shanika comes inside and shoots him again. Lisa then beats him to death with a candlestick while venting about black women always having to do everything. “See? That’s why I married a white woman,” comments King. The killers turn out to be twins, and it looks like they were being paid to kill the houseguests.
They all watch a video of Clifton disposing of bodies. Then Clifton’s corpse sits up and presses a button, once again locking all the doors. Ten years ago, there was a party, and he couldn’t figure out the game Spades and lost the game; he mistakenly renigged. They all laughed at him, so he drank a lot and killed someone on the road. He went to jail for years, and he blames them all for ruining his life. Meanwhile, Allison and King are upstairs watching all this on video.
DeWayne and Nnamdi use the women’s telepathic methods, but Clifton can hear it too. The whole group gangs up to defeat Clifton, who’s a complete lunatic.
Morning comes, and they all talk about calling the cops. “Nah.” They laugh. As the end credits roll, they decide how to call for help without getting shot. They choose poorly.
Commentary
So I guess the moral of the story is… don’t rent your cabin in the woods to anyone, no matter what race they are…?
There are a lot of funny bits here, I especially like it when Clifton twisted Nnamdi’s hand when he was holding the gun sideways so he was holding it straight. Why do people do that? The “O’Reilly Auto Parts” song, however, is not that catchy.
It plays on all the horror tropes involving people of color, and they really nail it on a few of them.