'To be able to have 'The Blackening' come out with the journey that it has attached it, for me, it's very inspiring to my younger self and I hope that people in similar positions can see that creating your own stuff and what can happen from it,' the comedian tells.

'And our parents were like, 'If you pee on yourself, you're gonna get in trouble.'Īs an alum of The Second City comedy improv group in Chicago, Perkins says it's gratifying to see what began as a short comedy sketch, evolve into a full-fledged film. 'I would not want to use the bathroom,' he laughs. He admits that while these type of movies inspired him as a kid, they also completely freaked him out. In order to survive, they must sacrifice the least 'Blackest' member of the group, or the one who appears to be the most disconnected to Black culture.Īlong with 'Candyman,' Perkins says his love of the genre came from watching other films like 'Cabin in the Woods,' 'Scream,' 'Ready or Not' and 'The Bride of Chucky.' The plot revolves around a group of college friends who meet up for a weekend reunion at a cabin only to discover they're being stalked by a maniacal serial killer. 'It's been so cool to expand it, to see it's journey from a stage sketch to a full feature film,' says the 32-year-old comedian. It caught the eye of producer and writer, Tracy Oliver ('Girls Trip') who co-wrote the script for the movie with Perkins. Originally pitched as a sketch for a Chicago stage show, the skit eventually made it to Comedy Central in 2018, where it went viral. And that's where the premise came from,' Perkins tells. 'I decided that if we were to put that cast in a horror movie, that in order for the Black person to die first, we'd have to have a system to figure out who's the Blackest. In his feature, which includes the tagline 'We can't all die first,' Perkins cleverly puts his spin on that long-standing trope by directly questioning who dies first when all the characters in a horror film are Black. 'I was thinking of a way in which I can discuss Blackness, but in a way that wasn't too on-the-nose,' says Dewayne Perkins, co-writer and star of the recently-released film.

Following in the footsteps of 'Scream' and other horror-comedies, 'The Blackening' is the latest movie to successfully mashup humor and murder, resulting in a funny new twist on the horror film trope which shows Black characters as the first to die.

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