[The Blackout]
Plot:It's Christmas Eve, the city goes dark, and the few remaining tenants of The Ravenwood find themselves trapped in their building. And they are not alone. Deep in the basement of the high-rise, a hideous breed of monster hatches and begins to wreak havoc. Now, everyone must find a way to kill the blood-thirsty creatures and survive the darkness before it destroys the world.

Cast:Barbara Streifel Sanders, Joseph Dunn, Ian Malcolm, Michael Caruso, Caroline Rich, Anthony Tedesco, James Martinez, John Gorman, Alexis Zibolis, Ace Gibson, Horace Martin, Larry Omaha, Ashby Plain, Abigail Droeger, Tyler Armstrong.

My Thoughts:Ruined by bad directing.

Review:"The Blackout" is an indie creature feature which follows in the footsteps of many small-budget monster movies that have came before it. The formula here is simple, take a large city like L.A, focus on a sigular apartment building in said city, create an atmosphere filled with strange occurances, and then link said occurances to the sudden appearance of some freaky and deadly monsters. Throw in a gaggle of characters, each one different from the last, and viola, you've got a winner.

Well...almost. "The Blackout" follows a tenement building in Los Angeles and the people that reside within it. It takes place at Christmas time, where L.A. is going through a major heatwave, and strange tremors are coming from beneath the ground. Power outages are occuring as well. And if you're thinking all of these things are the work of carnivorous monsters from outerspace, then you win the gold star.

The film hops back and forth to a few of the buildings tenants, delving into a few of their personal issues such as a divorced couples questionable future, and a married couple who has an unwanted guest crashing at their place during Christmas time. Unfortunately, none of these people are the least bit interesting, or likeable for that matter, and most of that is because the cast list reads like a big question mark. With no noteable genre names, even on a C-list level, attached to the movie.

Which means that the writer and director would wanna get the monster slashing and thrashing and slicing and dicing cranked up really quickly. Well, no not really. The intro into the monsters living in the basement is very slow, but when they do finally make an appearance, it's in one of the movies better sequences. The one thing to like about this movie is it's pretty simplistic and forward about what's happening.

There's no annoying military experiment-gone-wrong crap stuffed into the storyline, nor any U.S. government-playing-god cliches. The deal here is, monsters from outerspace have settled upon this building as their new breeding ground, and everyone inside has got to fight them to get out alive. This makes the movie easier to buy into, even if most of what happens is poorly executed.

The creatures themselves are interesting specimens, covered in talons and spikes, able to kill and rip people up using their tails, teeth, or claws, quick, black as night, and are a platoon of about atleast 30 or more. The big problem is though, the dark scenes are so poorly lit and filmed that you can hardly see the creatures when they go on the attack.

Which is a major problem in a monster movie. And considering the monsters have the power to short-out electrical currents in whatever vicinity they are in, badly and poorly filmed dark moments are many in this movie. I always say, if you're gonna make a movie about nocturnal creatures battling men and women in the dark, always make sure you've got the best camera and lighting available.

Otherwise, your film is just sound and fury, signifying nothing. Which is exactly what "The Blackout" is. Had it been shot better visually, and added in a likeable and interesting character or two, I would've rated it as a B flick. Instead, the film gets a C rating from me. The poor directing, the hyper-annoying characters, all combine to really hamper an otherwise decent creature feature. And a very abrupt ending didn't really help either. "The Blackout" isn't a piss poor effort from filmmaker Robert David Sanders, but it doesn't exactly live up to it's overall potential either.

Positives:Intriguing space monsters which should've been given more of a mythology and background. Good overall story idea.

Negatives:The dark scenes are poorly lit and filmed to the point where they have little to no visibility. The character were ALL annoying. Couldn't find one person to root for here, very disheartening. The ending was abrupt as well.

Overall:One and a half out of four stars.





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