The Blackout was actually a nice surprise!!!
A bunch of residents of an L. A building end up having to work together to survive an "Event" that has blacked out the whole city & deadly creatures have risen from underground & are hunting the residents of the Ravenwood apartment block. That's the basic fun B-movie plot & i dug it. This is set on Christmas eve, which i thought was weird as the Christmas setting served no purpose really except i suppose to gather the residents for a xmas eve party? It doesn't look very Christmassy & with the constant hot & sunny weather Los Angeles is a strange place for Christmas in my opinion. Anyway, there's tremors happening throughout the city, all power cuts off & the ground outside is splitting open due to a weird event. All this chaos unleashes humanoid blood-thirsty creatures from deep underground to feast of humans. A really cool pure B-movie idea.
One of the really strong points of this Low-budget flick is that the big bunch of characters is simply just that, a big bunch of characters & there's no one main character here & that was a decent part as i could not work out who was going to survive & that never happens in the Horror genre!!! I was surprised by the end. Also considering everyone here in the cast is unknown & pretty much everyone who helped make this film never done anything else (as of 2022) makes the film feel even more like a little rough gem. Even the director only made this one movie!!! Although Blackout isn't Amazing it's still a lot of fun & with creatures that are created very retro with just a hint of CGI with their scorpion like tails.
Another strong point is the Awesome looking Creatures, these are rubber suits & only a touch of c.g.i for the clawed whip-tale & i just loved their look & it was old school. These black & extremely violent creatures are some of the best I've ever seen in a low-budget Horror flick!!! In fact these things are so Cool they deserve a bigger movie to be in or a bigger budget sequel maybe? But i wouldn't love to see those well designed creatures again.
Also the score is decent.
I liked the big darkened building that are panicked bunch have to work their way through to find a way out & away from the creatures that are stalking them in the darkness & the kills are really gory & Cool.
The weak parts are the bunch of actors they got here as the only pretty decent one was the mum of the group who is trying to find her kids in all this chaos.
But to be honest it doesn't ruin anything because, hey this is a fun low-budget Creature Feature so i expect cheesiness & bad dialogue & weak actors. With that being said, i think the film is still a very fun late-night flick. The Blackout is all B-movie but at least its taken seriously by the characters in the situation. I found this pretty good for a small scale survival horror thriller, it's a a decently made movie & tried for bigger epic madness in it's ending & done what they could on a small budget. I applaud this little film for trying.
Also the actual End is abit of a letdown after everything that happens but atleast it wasn't an obvious one.
All in all The Blackout is a decent enough survival Horror with some Awesome creatures picking off people & an old school feel.
