Black as Night Movie Review: Blumhouse’s Horror Offering Drives a Stake Through Racism, Oppression and Social Inequality in a Conventional Vampire Thriller! (LatestLY Exclusive)

Black as Night Movie Review: Blumhouse Productions collaborates with Amazon Prime Video to bring double horror feature sets on the platform. For October 1, we have Bingo Hell and Black as Night. Talking about the latter, Black as Night is a vampire horror-thriller that is directed by Maritte Lee Go and written by Sherman Payne, and stars Asjha Cooper, Fabrizio Guido, Mason Beauchamp and the awesome Keith David in the lead. Welcome to the Blumhouse Teaser: Amazon Studios’ Double-Features Serve Scares Through Four Horror Films.

Set in New Orleans, Black as Night is centred around Shawna (Asjha Cooper), a black teenager who finds out that she has to set aside her coming-of-age problems in face of far more bloodthirsty stuff. Ridiculed by her elder brother for her 'Wesley Snipes' skin colour and having an unrequited crush on a senior Chris (Mason Beauchamp), Shawna also has to live separately from her mother Denise (Kenneshia Thompson), who had become a junkie after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, and is now living in deplorable conditions at the dilapidated The Ombreux. If you thought that Shawna had the worst - not to mention a plucky gay Mexican BFF Pedro (Fabrizio Guido) who keeps picking on her outfits - she now has to deal with vampires too!

In the beginning of the film, we see a homeless man near The Ombreux being attacked and killed by some vampires. In the later part of the film, even Shawna is attacked and bitten by a vampire, but she doesn't turn into one. It is, however, a tragedy that strikes closer home that invokes her on a vampire-killing spree.

Watch the Trailer:

Shawna may disagree on this - and she even says so - but we can't help but get reminded of Buffy the Vampire Slayer when she learns all about how to kill a vampire and then implements them. She even has a dedicated set of friends backing her, and also suffers losses in the process. Thankfully for her, the vampires she comes across follow the regular rules of vampire lore, like burning in sunlight and hating garlic. So her task is easier.

What Shawna doesn't have, and Buffy has, is the White Privilege.

Which comes very important in a film where vampirism is treated as an extreme sort of rebellion (like Killmonger wanted to take over the world in Black Panther) against centuries-long slavery and black oppression. It is another matter that the first people to be crushed in the new wave happens to be the homeless and destitutes.

One of the best scenes in Black as Night, is when Shawna and her friends interrogate a turned vampire, and burns his skin by using garlic, she asks him how it feels. He replies, if she ever got tear-gassed. That's some smart commentary that you don't see much in a horror movie, and it helps that the particular scene also ends in a moment of black humour. Evil Eye Movie Review: Priyanka Chopra Jonas-Produced Spooky Thriller Is Unimaginative and Dull.

Unfortunately, for all its incisive sharp addressal of black problems - including black women being demoralised for their skin colour by the men from their own community - Black as Night is trapped in a conventional horror narrative that is replete with regular vampire movie cliches and fights and an extremely predictable cliffhanger of an ending, that you would have smelled from afar. Even if you are allergic to garlic! Also, the annoying use of prota-commentary also doesn't help matter much.

Save for the somewhat thrilling final act - elevated by Keith David's effective, theatrical performance - the rest of the movie moves along with a dull squalor, not helped by its minimal budget, though the actors are quite good.

Yay!

- Some Incisive Writing and Occasional Smart Humour

Nay!

- Brings the Conventions of Similar Films We Have Seen Before

Final Thoughts

Black as Night could have been a really badass movie, if the horror part was punked up to balance the thoughtfulness inserted in addressing the problems of the marginalised community. Black as Night is streaming on Amazon Prime Video

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Oct 01, 2021 10:31 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).