Blackout (2008)
(In French, On Cable TV, April 2021) I’ve got faint praise and exasperated criticism for Blackout, even when I acknowledge that it’s a horror movie made according to the often-ludicrous standards of the genre. The compliments first: For a film largely focused on three strangers stuck in an elevator, director Rigoberto Castañeda wrings a surprising amount of style and energy to the result. In between Amber Tamblyn, Aidan Gillen and Armie Hammer, the cast is surprisingly well-known. Then, the mild criticisms: While the film focuses on a trio in an enclosed environment, Blackout escapes strict minimalism: there are enough flashbacks and peeks outside the elevator (not to mention excursions in the elevator shaft) that the entire result escapes the rigour of more high-concept takes, such as Devil. Even at 85 minutes, there’s not a whole lot to sustain the plot, and the style can’t quite compensate. Finally, the exasperation: As this is a horror film, it’s not enough for three strangers to be stuck together in a small box: one of them has to be a serial murderer, and this is actually held back as a revelation for far too long. (Also, once it’s revealed, much of the film stops making sense — “what idiot serial murderer would leave his apartment with a dead body inside?” comes to mind.) One of the drawbacks of having only three characters in an elevator is that it’s harder to create drama out of only a relationship triangle — even the aforementioned Devil started out with a pentagram of people. This does reinforce Blackout’s very artificial approach to plotting: we’re often reminded that this is a horror movie with little relationship to reality, and by the wilder third act (in which everyone dies at least once, thanks to fantasy sequences) nothing really matters. The ending isn’t really surprising, and any opportunity for deeper thematic commentary takes a back seat to grand-guignol shocks. The result is somewhat redeemed by the style and the actors (although the recent controversies about Armie Hammer have made it much funnier to say, “Hammer plays a character who’s not the serial killer”) but there’s definitely something lacking in order to get Blackout to fulfill its potential.