The Blackout (2009)

In a creature feature, the atmosphere and setting play part of the biggest role. The apartment building and the basement setting are pretty weak. The opening was kind if interesting, but once we got into the apartment itself, the movie went downhill pretty quickly. There are very few quality moments in this, and the fact of the matter is that the story, acting and overall attempt at horror with this movie was pretty thrown together.

The CGI didn't blend well with the live action footage, and the creatures themselves looked wooden and lifeless. The girls were good looking, but none of the characters were given even a modicum of development in order to care about their fates. The frenetic pace of the action was confusing, and there The only good things about The Blackout was the musical score which wasn't half bad, and a couple of the shots were quality. Overall, a PASS!

Fmovies: OK so not a great movie overall, yet still better than some of the stuff you'd for syfy channel movies. Characters are all one dimensional, clearly labeled, family, couple in love, couple in trouble, big guy with gun, annoying guy,the guy who can kind of guess what's going on, etc, etc. yeah the acting isn't all that great.

The premise -subterranean creatures coming up eating people and taking over, not that original but it kept my attention- with the victims you know nobody is safe. designs for the creatures look really cheap for a full length feature, but if you went to a Halloween party and saw some dude dressed up as one of said creatures, I'd be impressed. there were times when the tail manipulation was very CGI.

all in all, slow intro, some slightly interesting stuff in the middle , and a not so good ending. I'd recommend this is you haven't anything else to watch or to have a MST3K style viewing with friends.

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. 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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

The Blackout fmovies. All things considered, if you're in the mood for a nifty little horror movie you can do a lot worse than this one. Considering that this movie stars a collection of totally unknown actors I wasn't expecting very much, but the truth is that the story alone is pretty good, often frightening and sometimes quite graphic. The performances leave a little bit to be desired (which probably explains why this is a completely unknown cast) but even the performances pick up as the movie goes on, suggesting that it's much easier to realistically play terror than it is to play casual banter and make it interesting.

On Christmas Eve, Los Angeles is being struck by a series of tremors, that start out as minor ones but increase in intensity. Along with the tremors, blackouts begin to plague the city. The movie follows the experiences of the residents of one apartment building, who discover that their building is being infested with a number of human-like and human-devouring monsters, who seem to appear in the basement and work their way up through the floors. The monsters are truly frightening in appearance and the sometimes chaotic interplay between the various residents trying to escape is quite believable. The origin of the monsters was never definitely explained. The opening shot of the movie seemed to suggest that they were aliens, although the fact that they obviously seemed to have broken in through the basement suggested that perhaps they came from underground as a result of the tremors. I suppose it's possible that they were a combination of the two - aliens who long ago took up residence under the earth's surface, and are only now emerging. The uncertainty around that is OK. I can live with some mystery - it makes life more exciting!

All in all, this was surprisingly good and provided both entertainment and a few real chills.

Okay, well I knew this movie was not going to be overly impressive or anything, and rightly so. This movie was bad.

The acting was mediocre at best, though in certain cases it was terrible.

The movie suffered from a poor story. Strange humanoid creatures suddenly surfacing inside a building because of some earthquakes and electrical blackouts? That doesn't really make much sense. And better still, the creature was really poorly made. So you don't buy into it at any point.

The best thing in the movie would have to be the music, though even here there was some flaws. The music was way too loud in most places, drowning out much of the dialogue. This might be a good thing, as the dialogue was bad in places.

There was a lot of things that didn't really make sense or come together in a greater unity throughout the movie. But still I managed to make it through the entire movie, although I was hoping for a blackout to end the movie prematurely! This movie is definitely in the low scale of the horror genre. If you got nothing better to do for an hour and a half, put this movie on. But don't blame me...