Inside The Blackening: Cast & Crew Discuss Horror Movies 2023

Hey, I'm Allison with FlickDirect and I am here with Tracy Antoinette Jay and Cinqua. Cinqua, you got it. Cinqua, yeah. That's two days in a row for me. Yes, baby. On fire. I want to start with Tracy. So you saw the short, you wanted to option it for a script. What made you think that this would be a great idea for a movie? I was just excited to see all these black people who were all very different, but they were all just in this cabin in the woods.

And I love horror, but I'd never actually seen so many black people who were usually kind of like the black best friend of somebody, or there's like a black couple and then they die. But I'd never seen just the whole thing center around black people. So that interested me from the jump. And then I think just Dwayne's voice and his sense of humor and them debating who was black and who wasn't, it just made me laugh.

And I just wanted to be a part of that. I was like, there's something here, I just felt it. - There's absolutely something to that scene with who is the blackest. I have to say, it cracked me up completely. And I know I'm not necessarily the intended audience for it, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. - But you are the audience. - Oh, but you are. - You are.

- Well, good, I enjoyed it, absolutely. All right, Jay, they told me I can say this. Because you die first. - Do I? - Wow. (laughing) - Do I die first? Did y'all? - Does he? - Do I die first? - I don't think so. - I think you do. - I have Miami amnesia. - Yeah, me too. - Oh. - Every time I come to Miami, my mind gets a little hazy. - That could have been a dream sequence.

- It's mustard. - Yeah. - That's what it was. - Mustard, yeah. - It's just mustard. - DJ mustard. - It was like white girl amnesia, is that it? (laughing) - Yeah. - All right, so Jay didn't die first. So if you were to die first, (laughing) - How would that make you feel? - If I died for that, well I got my check. So I wouldn't feel bad at all, but listen.

Let's shift it, we could say this. Somebody has to go and Drew Barrymore had a super classic singing and screaming and you remembered it and you replayed it. - Yes. - What he's saying is there's always someone that has to start the revolution. - You have to start the revolution. - If you're gonna be a revolutionary, why not be a revolutionary like Jay Pharoah?

- Absolutely, I love that. - I love that, yeah, absolutely. All right, we'll go with that. - Jay the revolutionary. - We can all die first. Why not? - Right. - Why not? - Why can't we? - Yeah. - Antoinette knows. - The first happens one time. (laughing) One time. Okay, numerically it's impossible for us all. Because there are nine of us. [laughter] So here's my pitch.

So you're all in a cabin in the woods in different rooms. There's bomb sets in each room and then they set off the detonator and you're all gone at one time. Yeah. I mean it's a short film. That's a short, yeah. That is a short film. That's a quick question. Why not? Why not kill all the black people in one go? That's a movie film right there. - That's a movie, that's-- - What, at three minutes?

- That's an IG girl. (beep) - That is a real-- - I feel filled up a little bit. - That's an IG girl. That's an Instagram sketch. That's what I heard. - A little less funny. - Yeah. (laughing) She's got a packed punchline. - No, actually, as an outtake, that's the funniest part. - Yeah. - You know, I think it's also way more interesting to see all of these characters be like, you know, resilient and defiant and come together against a force of opposition that is trying to hurt them.

I think it's way more interesting to see different hues of blackness instead of seeing it in a stereotypical fashion. I think it's way more interesting to see blackness depicted in a way that it's never been depicted before. And I think it's way more interesting to completely start a whole new genre, if you think about it, because this isn't goofy comedy.

This is grounded, it's authentic, it's real. You feel our terror and then you laugh. You laugh. It's equal parts comedy and horror and it's well done and everybody should come with their friends on June 16th to the theater. - And historically we've had that in cinema for a long time and I think where we're at as a culture in the climate today from cinematic filmmaking is to tell a different story.

Is to have, like Antoinette was saying, a multitude of people represented from the diaspora but that tell a different story of succeeding towards the end, right? Because although we had a generation in genres of where it was like someone of color dying first and it's funny, what we're doing now is creating a new funny and creating a new rendition of what we hope to be a cultural progression.

And like you said, on Juneteenth, making it a weekend that everyone comes and watches, but making it a weekend that lasts forever, where people wanna own that weekend in cinema overall. I think that's the goal, is making a film that is the tentpole for the future as well. - And you can't quantify blackness by questions or anything like that. 'Cause at the end of the day, if the cops show up and as soon as you hear that boop boop, We all get the same feeling in the pit of our stomachs.

We are all, we are different. And this film shows every type of black person. That's celebratory. It definitely does. It's a great film. It's funny. It's got a lot of heart as well. Thank you all so much. Thank you. Hit like, smash subscribe, and get notified for whenever reviews, interviews, and news go live. (dramatic music) (explosion) [BLANK_AUDIO]