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The Blackout (2009) Movie Review
Written by: Chrizzy
It’s Christmas Eve. The Pierce family try having a quiet dinner in their LA apartment. Further down the hall, a party brews between friends. Amid tremors and power outages, Kyle (Tyler Armstrong), son of Elizabeth (Barbara Streifel Sanders) and Daniel Pierce (Joseph Dunn), and his younger sister, Ashley (Abigail Droeger), go missing, and when the partygoers are attacked and one is killed by something from the darkness, two nights of fun and excitement become one fight for survival. Darkness is a tried-and-true method of building tension. If you want people to wonder what’s lurking in that corner over there, turn the lights off. If you want them to only see the shadow of a hand to conceal a killer’s identity, turn the lights off. If you want to condition your audience by giving an everyday situation an air of malevolence, turn the lights off. There are lots of reasons why a director may choose to jump straight to “camera, action,” and, often, this lack of lighting is effective. But then there are films like The Blackout, which fall into the hands of directors like Robert David Sanders. In this case, the darkness is an attempt at mystery, and it succeeds at this, up to a point. The setting is eerie at times, as it should be, and it heightens the fear of what could be around the next corner or behind the door up ahead. In some scenes, there is also the use of emergency lighting, with a red tint, adding an ominous hue to these scenes. However...this is where the positive points end. Red tint is good, and it can be unsettling if used correctly. Unfortunately, Sanders had no idea how to use his lighting correctly, sticking the emergency lighting in scenes with no tension at all. And, as we all know, zero tension times red tint is still zero tension. As far as the darkness, itself, is concerned, there is hardly ever enough of it to hide what should be hidden. At times, the dark is even countered by spotlights illuminating exactly what the darkness was meant to conceal. For example, in a very early scene, when the monsters lurking through the building should still be left to the imagination, one is very plainly seen lit up in the middle of an otherwise pitch black basement. This undoes any tension created by the darkness, and makes a moot point of a major part of the plot, not to mention the film’s title. The rest of the plot needs no directorial errors to ruin it, instead opting to commit suicide. The story, itself, is weak, not to mention overall uneventful, being half an hour of “your brother’s an idiot” and “who invited the black guy?” plus half an hour of “we need to get out of here,” topped off by ten minutes of climbing an elevator shaft. There is also a notable lack of any explanation for even the most out-of-place events, leaving not just most things (which would have been fine) but everything unexplained. Where did the monsters come from? Why were they in the ground? What’s causing the tremors, not to mention the power outage which serves as the focal point of the film? What about the large stalagmite-like upheavals? And perhaps most devastating to the movie is the end. Anyone else who sees this movie will probably be left thinking the same thing I was when the credits began to roll – what the hell was that all about? In addition to the plot’s efforts to make the film less than worth the $15 paid for it, the characters did little to make the film enjoyable. At first, as they were acting out everyday situations, the acting was watchable. This changed as soon as the action began. With an ensemble of novice actors, a twelve-year-old girl, and a former cameraman, the best acting came from the girl – Abigail Droeger. Had she been the focus of the film, I believe her talent would have rivalled the combined acting abilities of the entire adult cast. What screen time she had was well-done and enjoyable. She was the only one who realistically conveyed their fear, and she should be proud; she saves this film from bottoming out completely. Many more details work together to make The Blackout a failed masterpiece. It had promise, but bad acting, bad direction, bad dialogue, bad use of lighting, bad storytelling, and bad execution have a way of ruining a film. Maybe someone more adept at writing and directing can remake this someday and turn it into the tension-filled creature-feature it should have been the first time. Maybe once Robert David Sanders gets more experienced (according to IMDb, this is his directorial debut - everyone has to start somewhere), he can even do that himself. Until then, it will sit at the back of my horror collection…probably between Soulkeeper and Hellraiser: Deader.
Written by: Chrizzy
It’s Christmas Eve. The Pierce family try having a quiet dinner in their LA apartment. Further down the hall, a party brews between friends. Amid tremors and power outages, Kyle (Tyler Armstrong), son of Elizabeth (Barbara Streifel Sanders) and Daniel Pierce (Joseph Dunn), and his younger sister, Ashley (Abigail Droeger), go missing, and when the partygoers are attacked and one is killed by something from the darkness, two nights of fun and excitement become one fight for survival. Darkness is a tried-and-true method of building tension. If you want people to wonder what’s lurking in that corner over there, turn the lights off. If you want them to only see the shadow of a hand to conceal a killer’s identity, turn the lights off. If you want to condition your audience by giving an everyday situation an air of malevolence, turn the lights off. There are lots of reasons why a director may choose to jump straight to “camera, action,” and, often, this lack of lighting is effective. But then there are films like The Blackout, which fall into the hands of directors like Robert David Sanders. In this case, the darkness is an attempt at mystery, and it succeeds at this, up to a point. The setting is eerie at times, as it should be, and it heightens the fear of what could be around the next corner or behind the door up ahead. In some scenes, there is also the use of emergency lighting, with a red tint, adding an ominous hue to these scenes. However...this is where the positive points end. Red tint is good, and it can be unsettling if used correctly. Unfortunately, Sanders had no idea how to use his lighting correctly, sticking the emergency lighting in scenes with no tension at all. And, as we all know, zero tension times red tint is still zero tension. As far as the darkness, itself, is concerned, there is hardly ever enough of it to hide what should be hidden. At times, the dark is even countered by spotlights illuminating exactly what the darkness was meant to conceal. For example, in a very early scene, when the monsters lurking through the building should still be left to the imagination, one is very plainly seen lit up in the middle of an otherwise pitch black basement. This undoes any tension created by the darkness, and makes a moot point of a major part of the plot, not to mention the film’s title. The rest of the plot needs no directorial errors to ruin it, instead opting to commit suicide. The story, itself, is weak, not to mention overall uneventful, being half an hour of “your brother’s an idiot” and “who invited the black guy?” plus half an hour of “we need to get out of here,” topped off by ten minutes of climbing an elevator shaft. There is also a notable lack of any explanation for even the most out-of-place events, leaving not just most things (which would have been fine) but everything unexplained. Where did the monsters come from? Why were they in the ground? What’s causing the tremors, not to mention the power outage which serves as the focal point of the film? What about the large stalagmite-like upheavals? And perhaps most devastating to the movie is the end. Anyone else who sees this movie will probably be left thinking the same thing I was when the credits began to roll – what the hell was that all about? In addition to the plot’s efforts to make the film less than worth the $15 paid for it, the characters did little to make the film enjoyable. At first, as they were acting out everyday situations, the acting was watchable. This changed as soon as the action began. With an ensemble of novice actors, a twelve-year-old girl, and a former cameraman, the best acting came from the girl – Abigail Droeger. Had she been the focus of the film, I believe her talent would have rivalled the combined acting abilities of the entire adult cast. What screen time she had was well-done and enjoyable. She was the only one who realistically conveyed their fear, and she should be proud; she saves this film from bottoming out completely. Many more details work together to make The Blackout a failed masterpiece. It had promise, but bad acting, bad direction, bad dialogue, bad use of lighting, bad storytelling, and bad execution have a way of ruining a film. Maybe someone more adept at writing and directing can remake this someday and turn it into the tension-filled creature-feature it should have been the first time. Maybe once Robert David Sanders gets more experienced (according to IMDb, this is his directorial debut - everyone has to start somewhere), he can even do that himself. Until then, it will sit at the back of my horror collection…probably between Soulkeeper and Hellraiser: Deader.
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