{"id":40455,"date":"2023-07-26T01:34:36","date_gmt":"2023-07-26T05:34:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=40455"},"modified":"2023-08-02T01:12:58","modified_gmt":"2023-08-02T05:12:58","slug":"blackout-2023-fantasia-film-festival-2023-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2023\/07\/26\/blackout-2023-fantasia-film-festival-2023-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Blackout (2023) [Fantasia Film Festival 2023]\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In a small town, a werewolf is causing mayhem. A local artist seems to believe that he is the werewolf.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Written and directed by Larry Fessenden, the film has a story that feels very much like it belongs in the Fessenden body of work. The film takes a look at a small town, its issues, and the idea of what a werewolf would do to such a town and its residents. Of course, this comes through the view of an artist to add a bit of interest to the proceedings. As it is, this film will work great for fans of Fessenden, but most likely not too many others. The film is well-written and well-directed of course, but for this viewer and werewolf fan, it didn\u2019t connect. It\u2019s clear it should have, yet it didn\u2019t. The story was just there, nothing more, nothing less. Which will work for some, but overall kept losing the attention here. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The cast does decent throughout the film, everything giving good energy to their parts, but no one connecting with this viewer, which is really the theme here. The performances are fine by the leads and most of the supporting cast. Some are not as good, but they get so little screen time that is ends up not mattering this much. The one performance that comes off as best of the bunch is James Le Gros and he\u2019s barely in there, proving he\u2019s talented and can definitely make the most of anything, but that also means that the leads, while giving good performances, didn\u2019t come off memorable which is too bad here.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The film\u2019s technical aspects cannot be fully reviewed here as the version provided has temporary music, temporary vfx, the color grading wasn\u2019t finished, and the mixing was not done. That being said, there are some practical effects. The design for those, especially the head and hands of the werewolf were well done and executed. However, they lead to wondering why he only had his head and hands turn when he became a werewolf. The design of these could have easily extended to full body. Of course, this may be an issue of budget, but there are ways to trick the eye, so it comes off as an artistic decision which feels off for the genre. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Blackout is not a bad film, but also not the most interesting take on the werewolf sub-genre. It tries to do something with themes of otherness and how small towns react to people who are different, but it all comes off as something we\u2019ve seen before, something that should have been pushed further maybe to make it all more interesting. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This year the Fantasia International Film Festival runs in Montreal from July 20th<\/sup>\u00a0to August 9th<\/sup>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a small town, a werewolf is causing mayhem. A local artist seems to believe that he is the werewolf.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1284,12],"tags":[477,501],"class_list":["post-40455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-festivalsevents","category-movie-reviews","tag-horror","tag-indie-film"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40455"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40455\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40526,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40455\/revisions\/40526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}