The cinematic monsters made famous by Universal nearly a century ago continue to appear on our screens today, though often now imbued with much more modern symbolism; the vampire, Frankenstein’s creature (or versions of it) and of course the werewolf are used to represent current predilections, anxieties and fears. You could even say the werewolf has had a minor cinema resurrection of late, so it’s unsurprising that genre film actor, writer and director Larry Fessenden should have eventually turned his hand to the genre, after already directing stories about vampires and Frankenstein-like creatures; It’s apparently been a long-held ambition of his, too. The result, Blackout (2023) – not to be confused with the four other films or TV series of that name which have appeared since 2019 alone – is clearly and openly a werewolf movie, and one which tries to make clear its ambitions to address current socio-political topics right from the start. Unfortunately, to make these two strands hang together requires work from the viewer which I couldn’t muster; the aims may be noble, but the storytelling itself is laden with errors and fundamental issues which prevent anything more profound from successfully landing. As such, what are we left with?
We start with a ‘wolf’s eye view’ which actually calls to mind a lot of the more fun, honest-to-goodness monster movies of the 80s, including the old tradition of getting in some early nudity, as a lovemaking couple get terrorized by moonlight. There then follows a long, long panning shot of what looks like an artist’s studio. We’re left in no doubt that we’re dealing with a painter; the artist himself, Charley (Alex Hurt) even sleeps covered in paint. But then, he’s awake, clearing up and heading out; it seems he’s treated himself to a motel/artist’s retreat for a month, but now he’s heading back to town, specifically a rural town called Talbot Falls.
What follows is a difficult-to-follow outpouring of plot exposition which covers the following in just a few of the film’s opening minutes: Charley works in construction it seems, except for when he takes the month off and goes incommunicado; when he returns to the work site, he speaks briefly to a man called Hammond, who is building a resort near town, and this gives way to a conversation about: migrant worker exploitation, historical and current levels of corruption and generational conflict. Charley then pops in on a lady who has asked him to paint her shed (Barbara Crampton) but this turns into a request to help him decipher some old legal documentation relevant to the resort; despite discovering that there’s a long-standing but troubled romantic connection between Charley and Hammond’s daughter, there’s a romantic kiss between Charley and this Kate, and then it’s revealed that Charley is leaving town, again, but for good this time.
And why? Well, it could be that Charley is our werewolf; that would cover the month away thing, and also the murder of the naked couple (which is currently being pinned on a Mexican worker by the villainous Hammond). A lunar episode soon confirms our suspicions by turning Charley again (conveniently, it does this for three days per month) and on this occasion, he crashes his car as a result, before tearing his way past/through some would-be helpers and running from place to place.
Phew; after putting all those pieces on the board, it’s going to take a deft hand to play them. But this film can’t. After creating this barrage of names, topics and ideas, the film drags almost to a halt. It becomes Charley, travelling: Wolf Charley running somewhere, then Charley walking, and then catching lifts with people, up and down the road. The conversations which Charley has provide at least a sense that he has some scheme or motive at heart, something he now has to do. But the pace here is exasperating, skipping from crude snippets of exposition to laboured skits by cartoonish minor characters. First the film acts like it has to tell us everything in no time at all, and then it has all the time in the world to hone in on its attempts at humour.
As a werewolf film made by a frequent horror actor and horror fan, Blackout must come with a wealth of knowledge about the perks and pitfalls of filming werewolves, and it does at least seem to understand that less is more when it comes to transformation scenes, at least if budget is an issue. Accordingly, the film uses darkness to cover any major issues, and uses quick edits/close ups a lot of the time. This is wise (though it blows this wise approach out of the water with a few extraordinary scenes later in the film). Again, perhaps the emphasis on werewolf as corrector of social ills takes some of the fun out of things, or at least shifts the emphasis too many times; this is another of the ways in which the film’s priorities seem contested. Other aspects are a little too convenient; okay, Blackout hangs onto the Universal trope that silver bullets stop werewolves, but what are the odds that Charley happens to know someone in this town of what feels like fifty souls, who can unquestioningly make him some?
But perhaps that’s ultimately what makes this film feel broadly unsuccessful: so much of it depends on this idea of a community, of people pitted against one another by a calculating, rich white guy. And yet the calculating rich guy is almost never on screen, has little presence, and there is no sense of a town here. Charley spends the biggest part of the film travelling from remote house to remote house, each of which is inhabited by maybe one or two people. You never see more than a handful of people on screen until we’re approaching the ninety minute mark, and by then it feels strange that the film’s ample running time has covered so much, but not given any sense of the community on which everything depends. This would have been more important than the rather strained inclusion of ‘art’ as a plot device, which turns out to be fairly trivial in the grander scheme of things. The film valiantly tries to draw its elements together by the end, but by this point it has been compounding its issues for almost a hundred minutes. It’s by turns sluggish and unfocused, hurried and pious. It’s a shame, but so it goes.
Blackout (2023) featured at the Fantasia International Film Festival.