Horror Movie Review: BlackOut (2023)

Writer and director Luca Zanlorenzi’s low-budget horror movie, BlackOut, is 80 minutes of your life simply wasted. A poor story and bad characters, constantly dark to the point of being unwatchable, acting that is subpar, and a total lack of scares.

Alice (Carlotta Nebbia) and her boyfriend Matt (Federico Clerico) seem like a happy couple, heading off to a remote farmhouse to meet their friends, Summer (Virginia Orlando) and Dylan (Samuele Toldo), who are also a couple. They’re planning to hang out as a group to celebrate a rare solar phenomenon that will cause a blackout across the entire planet.

After eating and drinking, they decide to play some games to pass the time, and through this, it is revealed that Matt and Summer have been cheating on their respective partners with each other. Obviously, this kills the party dead, but the group have a much bigger problem to contend with. The solar event hasn’t ended when it was supposed to, the power is still off, and there’s a beast prowling around outside.

Is its arrival related to the solar event? Will the group be able to survive and if they do, will they be able to get past their issues?

In a much better written movie, all of this would be really compelling but BlackOut is not a well written movie. The overarching plot of the solar event never feels big, not helped by the isolated locale and errors in shooting that show a clear moon. Meaning it’s night time, and not the sun being blacked out. With no power, the movie is in perpetual darkness, made all the worse when the characters are outside. It’s near unwatchable at times.

As for the threat? It’s hilariously bad. Basically, a man/beast that moves on all fours and can be killed as easily as a human being. The implication that loads of these creatures have appeared and humanity is under threat, is laughable once you see it.

Then you have the cheating subplot, which is what we call filler/time wasting. It’s pointless to the story and if it didn’t exist, it wouldn’t make a difference. You would think that the idea would be to create tension inside the house among the characters, but that’s not the case. In fact, once the threat of the man beastie is revealed, it’s all but forgotten about.

Although there is no way these actors could have been directed to make any ill feeling or tension actually watchable.

In a movie that is only 80 minutes long, having 20 minutes of filler is unacceptable. Although don’t let that fool you into thinking the other 60 is exciting or interesting, because it’s not. BlackOut is boring, BlackOut is slow, and BlackOut is very forgettable.