Blackout (2023) Review

Charley Barrett (Alex Hurt) is an artist and sometime contractor who’s dealing – not especially well – with the death of his father. Alex’s dad was a pillar of the community who brought prosperity to the area and earned the respect of all, particularly prominent local businessman Hammond (Marshall Bell). Hammond has his own issues with Charley, not least because he’s the ex of his daughter Sharon (Addison Timlin). Charley suspects that his father’s dealings weren’t on the level but he has a more pressing issue to attend to: Charley believes he’s a werewolf and is responsible for a series of gruesome killings. Waking up half naked in the woods and having no memory of the previous evening is not going to convince him otherwise…

Larry Fessenden heads back to the mash-up of classic monster stylings and modern societal issues as Blackout portrays a corner of small town America as a backwater where the white guys make the money with a disregard for ethics and a drive to exploit the minorities for their labour while viewing them as inferior in every way. Hammond is convinced the wave of murders is being committed “by a Mexican” with absolutely no evidence to support this and Alex is looking for any way to bring him down.

A horror movie with a social conscience would normally be right up my street and the set up for Blackout is a promising one but, like its lead character, it wanders around far too much and takes the power from the main thrust of the story. Marshall Bell provides a great line in focused animosity but he’s away from the action so long that he doesn’t cast the shadow he should over Alex’s mission. Likewise, it’s always good to see Barbara Crampton and she’s decent here as a legal expert whom Alex visits to hand over his father’s business documents in the hope that she’ll uncover some dodgy dealings but after this meeting – which includes an awkward bit of thwarted romance – she never appears again.

Unlike Fessenden’s earlier Habit, which leaves the viewer questioning whether or not any of the characters are actually vampires, we’re left in little doubt that Charley’s the lycanthrope causing the mayhem so the drama and suspense comes from just how, or if, he intends to put an end to his own reign of terror. Unfortunately, any forward momentum is often stalled by the structure of the plot, which presents a series of vignettes in which Charley calls in on various folks around town, has a chat asks for a lift, strolls for a bit, gets another lift, kills a couple of people, calls in on someone else and so on.

Whereas Habit excelled in that kind of looser, more episodic narrative, it undercuts any chance the tale has at building any tension. There are gory asides as Charley transforms and attacks unsuspecting folks, bringing in a veteran/rookie cop duo to investigate in their own subplot which runs at an oddly different pace to the overall piece and, to be fair, provided a genuine and darkly comic surprise for this reviewer as the forces of law enforcement find themselves up against the very monster that’s hitherto been the stuff of exaggerated rumour.

It all comes to a head in the final ten minutes, where all interested parties converge at the town’s police station and a number of loose ends are tied up. As a showdown, it’s a fun one, but the various parties have been sent so fleeting beforehand that it registers far less of an impact that it could have had there not been so much going on in terms of Charley’s life. In trying to balance his various relationship woes while still attempting the story a real sense of social conscience, it falls somewhere in between and the climax feels rushed considering the way in which the tale has ambled along up to that point.

Like Alex, there’s a lot of meandering before the resolution but the performances carry Blackout through the wordier and worthier sequences. Hurt – son of William – makes for an interesting lead, fleshing out the decidedly unheroic, and maddeningly indecisive, Alex with heart and humour. Timlin is excellent but given far too little to do other than get frustrated at her ex-boyfriend and show up towards the end to deliver the exclamation point we suspect that she’s eventually going to be handed by default. James Le Gros (who is also one of the producers) also appears as one of the town’s unofficially appointed enforcers but again, he doesn’t have the screen time to truly shine in a role that demands more detail.

Blackout is an odd experience, creating a strange paradox in which there’s so much going on in this particular world while almost nothing’s happening on screen, even though there’s a decent amount of splashy gore and a smidge of nudity to jolt you from the musings on bigotry and corruption. As a werewolf pic, there are amusing references – Alex is staying at the Talbot Falls motel and at one point someone mentions Lon Chaney – but anyone expecting howling at the moon and a growing sense of threat to both hunter and hunted might be confused at this particular treatment of the legend. The elements are all present but it’s strange how they don’t cohere as they should. For me, too much of it didn’t land, but at the same time I can’t say that Larry Fessenden goes for the obvious and I can’t say I wasn’t curious as to how Charley’s various predicaments would be resolved.

Movie Rating:

Blackout trailer