‘The Blackening’ cast on ‘fun’ shooting the horror film, creating new ‘data points’ for Black viewers

TheGrio caught up with the film's co-writer Dewayne Perkins, director Tim Story and the cast of the film at the American Black Film Festival in Miami last month.

Jared Alexander

Jul 6, 2023

“The Blackening” is here. Since premiering on Juneteenth, “The Blackening” has scared movie theatergoers nationwide, successfully mixing spooky with gust-busting comedy. At the American Black Film Festival this year, theGrio’s Jared Alexander caught up with the film’s co-writer and star Dewayne Perkins, director Tim Story and castmates Jermaine Fowler, Melvin Gregg and X Mayo.

"The Blackening" Tribeca Film Festival Premiere At The Apollo Theatre — Jermaine Fowler, Yvonne Orji, Melvin Gregg, Dewayne Perkins, Jay Pharoah, Tim Story, Grace Byers, Sinqua Walls, Antoinette Robertson, and X Mayo attend ‘The Blackening’ Tribeca Film Festival Premiere at The Apollo Theater on June 13, 2023, in New York City. (Photo by Arturo Holmes/Getty Images for Lionsgate)

“It was just as much fun filming as it was after we’d cut,” Gregg recalled when explaining the bond the cast formed on set. “The movie at its core is about friendships.” The bond only helped them tell the story, which follows a college friend group reuniting. “It’s not just that we’re friends, this a reunion from 10 years ago, so it’s like we’ve been friends for a very long time, and I think that was seen on screen,” Mayo added.

As readers may recall, the comedy horror film has a familiar premise: a group of friends get together in a creepy cabin in the woods, where a mysterious and terrifying killer stalks them. Flipping a prevalent horror film trope on its head, however, the entire cast in this film is Black.

As the tagline for the film reads, they “can’t all die first,” if every single character is Black. The flipping of tropes and poking at trends was certainly intentional, Perkins explained to us. “I think society is impacted by the art that we consume and I think that there have been far too many data points for Black people in horror,” he said.

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‘The Blackening’ horror film to debut with Tribeca Festival at the Apollo

With the film, Perkins hopes to create a new data point for the culture. “What does it look like if a movie is ‘The Blackening’ and ‘Get Out?’ To be able to create a new layer on the genre of Black people in horror is, for me personally as a human, I know I feel like, ‘Oh, this is what a legacy is!'”

“The Blackening” is in theaters now.

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