Blackout
The movie starts with scenes of guys getting drunk, partying at a strip club. Pulsating music plays over the images, as well as the credits. After the credits, we cut to the next morning, where one of the guys (Harley, played by Timothy Woodward Jr.) and his girlfriend (Sophie, played by Chelsea Reeves) are waking up, getting ready for a big meeting. When Harley goes to the bathroom, however, he makes a gruesome discovery– a dead, mostly-naked girl is in the shower. He’s hungover, to be sure, but he can’t remember anything that would lead to that. Unfortunately, when he gets back from his meeting, the body is still there, so he clearly wasn’t hallucinating. Now, there’s a mystery to solve.
Writer Pia Cook and director Matthew K. Hacker aren’t so much interested in the mystery of how the body got there, however, so much as how it shakes up Harley’s life. He doesn’t do a whole lot of investigating into why the body ended up in his shower, but rather, he puts it in one of his suitcases and dumps it. Unfortunately for him, though, another one turns up the next day, this time in his bed. Rather than call the police, however, he calls his best friend, Alfred (Robert Covington), to try and get rid of it. Now, Harley’s really worried, about his sanity; who he can trust; and why this is happening.
“Blackout” is an intriguing murder mystery where the actual murders seem to take a back seat to the psychological toll these events take on our protagonist, who is put through the ringer. He distances himself from his girlfriend, and worries about what could happen with his new promotion at work, where his boss, and soon-to-be father-in-law, has made it clear that the only acceptable number of strikes is zero. Needless to say, Harley waking up rather regularly with dead women in his apartment is a pretty big strike against him. When the mystery is revealed, however, I have to admit it wasn’t quite as impactful as I would hope it would be for this type of story. Part of that is because of the performances themselves, which are good, but mostly struck me as serviceable, but it’s also because Cook and Hacker don’t really come up with an intriguing reason for the events that came before. Yes, jealousy can be a powerful motivator in a story, but the way it’s handled here, doesn’t really give us as much of a window into the dynamics at play that are necessary to give the finally the punch it requires. (The final moments of the film don’t help its cause, either.) It’s a shame that a movie that starts with such promise, ends in rather limp fashion, because I was definitely ready for a wilder ride than this.
