The Blackening Trailer: Juneteenth Getaway Turns Deadly in Hilarious Send-Up of Horror Movies

Jen Juneau
·2 min read
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The Blackening is upon us!

"They can't all die first," reads the intro to the hilarious trailer of the upcoming horror comedy from director Tim Story (Ride Along, Think Like a Man, Barbershop) that "skewers genre tropes."

According to an official synopsis, The Blackening "centers around a group of Black friends who reunite for a Juneteenth weekend getaway only to find themselves trapped in a remote cabin with a twisted killer."

"Forced to play by his rules, the friends soon realize this ain't no m-----f---ing game," the synopsis continues, adding that the film "poses the sardonic question: If the entire cast of a horror movie is Black, who dies first?"

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Melvin Gregg as King, Grace Byers as Allison, Antoinette Robertson as Lisa, Sinqua Walls as Nnamdi, Jermaine Fowler as Clifton, Dewayne Perkins as Dewayne, and Xochitl Mayo as Shanika in The Blackening.
Melvin Gregg as King, Grace Byers as Allison, Antoinette Robertson as Lisa, Sinqua Walls as Nnamdi, Jermaine Fowler as Clifton, Dewayne Perkins as Dewayne, and Xochitl Mayo as Shanika in The Blackening.

Glen Wilson/Lionsgate The Blackening (2023)

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The film stars Grace Byers, Jermaine Fowler, Melvin Gregg, X Mayo, Dewayne Perkins, Antoinette Robertson, Sinqua Walls, Jay Pharoah and Yvonne Orji.

Perkins (The Amber Ruffin Show, Brooklyn Nine-Nine) and Tracy Oliver (Girls Trip, Harlem) wrote the screenplay, while The Blackening's producers include Oliver, Story, Jason Clark, Marcei A. Brown, E. Brian Dobbins and Sharla Sumpter Bridgett.

In the trailer, the group of friends starts off excited about their getaway before the lights in the cabin go out (naturally) and they venture into a room where they discover a sinister-looking, not-totally-unlike-Jumanji board game titled The Blackening.

"That s--- probably runs on racism," one of the friends jokes of the game.

The Blackening poster
The Blackening poster

Lionsgate Poster for The Blackening (2023)

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A vintage television soon plays disturbing images, which causes the friends to deduce that they have to play the game to have any chance of getting out alive.

One of the cards drawn explains that "the Black character is always the first to die" in horror films, and instructs the group to "sacrifice the person you deem the Blackest" to spare the others.

After exploring different horror-movie tropes that are almost never a good idea (like splitting up), the group hears the same voice telling them, "It's time to die" before a masked figure shows up in person to wreak havoc.

"Why Black women always gotta save everyone all the g--damn time?!" Robertson's character shouts as she beats someone with a candlestick.

The Blackening is in theaters June 16.