'The Blackening': A Clever and Hilarious Horror Satire

"The Blackening" is a slasher movie that doubles as a social satire, with a script full of comical self-awareness. The film is a highly barbed and witty riff on Black in-jokes, Black pop-culture referentiality, and Blackness itself. The movie culminates in the killer asking the group's members to save themselves by sacrificing the one of them who's "the Blackest." The very notion of being "the Blackest" is a self-destructive power trip. The film invites everyone in the audience to feel included in its diabolically socially competitive, naughty-clever games.