The Blackout (2009)
2/10
American horror is on it's last leg!
8 November 2009
Warning: Spoilers
We open with a family and the fathers slacker brother having Christmas dinner. Their next door neighbors are throwing a Christmas party, they're a bunch of lame D-bags. Some guy awaiting his soon to be divorced wife's return. And some agoraphobic dork with a short wave transmitter. The city has been suffering small earth quakes all day and mild blackouts do to the earth quakes it would seem.

After a small family fight the parents go into the bedroom for some unplanned alone time. The daughter comes in and catches them and inquires as to what they're doing. The parents reply "We're playing." The daughter replies "Can I play too." This also occurs when the son enters the room. The son is sent to the basement to get his Christmas present? On the other side of the script the guy and his soon to be divorced wife mildly argue about something and he storms off to the party.

Then if this movie didn't have enough pointlessly intertwining plots some other couple gets tossed in so they can die. They're in love thats about all they have going for them.

The party seems to be filled with the types of people that you avoided in college. Basically rich kids who tell bad jokes, hit on their best friends significant other, and whose social skills were acquired at keg parties or discotheques.

And then yes more characters are brought in to die. A rather large man and his small and disgustingly sleazy friend.

At this point the son has gone to the basement for his gift and noticed these alien like shell creatures with slimy tails being dragged across the floor by fishing line (no joke it was like an Ed Wood film). Then one of these creatures sheds its shell and grows roughly 100 times it's size in about two seconds. And then it's dinner time.

Dad and the daughter decide to go search for dinner time but for some bizarre reason only the daughter gets in the elevator (which I'm still not sure why the characters are still using since every ten seconds or so there's another earth quake). And guess who doesn't think to use the stairs to follow her? Once in the basement desert sees the trail of blood only after getting off the elevator. She hears noises and hides.

At this point weird nerd guy with the short wave radios get a visit from the super and an electrician they decide to go into the hallway. The electrician gets it in the gut. This is when the super and dork come to the conclusion that the creatures emit an electromagnetic signal that disrupts electricity and thus screws with the lights.

At the party the guy with the ex starts being aggressively hit on by the hostess and is caught by his soon to be ex. Finally noises start coming from a bedroom and the hostess goes to check it out. The monsters are pretty much the shape of a human with what appears to be an exoskeleton but it's actually skin and it's covered in sweet and sour sauce. It's face is sort of Venom from Spider-man and it has a tail with a razor sharp pincer on the end of it. I't grabs sleazy hostess and begins to devour her. The big guy who had just finished telling a story that he heard someone else tell at a fraternity party five years prior pulls out a hand gun with a light attached to it. Then he pulls out another one. Yes, thats right from his waist area he pulls out not one but two handguns both with lights attached to them. I often go to Christmas parties with two hand guns.

All the party people try to get into the next door families house and have to kick the door in to get some sanctuary yet for some reason the parent don't want to help them and insist that they all leave immediately. Finally the guy who was really gross and came with the big guy with two guns drops some knowledge on the crew by explaining that the creature must be photosensitive yo! Dang ain't you never watched the discovery channel. Whack a@* crackers! And suggests to try and hurt the creature with light while the others make a run for the stair well. They get to the stairwell but Discovery channel gets the pincers to the throat.

For some reason guy and girl who are in love stay behind in the families apartment. The guy puts a ring on girls finger and she gets the pincers to the skull. Guy drops the other gun and walks out into the hallway covered in her blood. The Charlton Heston guy hears their screams and decides to go back up.

There's an awesome goof right here regarding the floor number they go down the stairs by the third floor twice. On floor two they meet up with Super and Dork. The earth quakes are being caused by sharp rocks coming from underground and one has blocked the entrance, The ladies are left on the second floor stairwell landing (except for mom) so the men can go search for the kids. In the basement they encounter two of the monsters and actually you never see more than two at a time which leads me to think that they only had two monster suits made. They kill one and then another and the mom cries because they find dinner times shoe.

I'm running out of space so I'll let the end anger you as it did, me.

The script was sub-par. The acting was dry, completely lacking of sincerity, and just generally unbelievable. There seemed to be no direction and no one around to examine what was being done with a critical eye. The monsters were beyond lame. Zero explanations were offered.
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