The Blackout Robert David Sanders

It's Christmas Eve in downtown Los Angeles. The city's experiencing an unseasonal heatwave and suffering power outages. And when the lights start going out, subterranean creatures start attacking.

Sound corny? Well, that's because it is. In fact most of the bits of this film are clichéd. We have the couple whose relationship is shaky; the token ethnic minority cast member; the token nerd who has problem interacting with "real" people, square-jawed military-type sure-to-be-killed-in-two-minutes-flat macho man; and a couple of precocious kids.

You would have only had to throw in a cute dog, preferably a Labrador, and possibly a guitar-playing nun and you would have had the full set. The plot too is nothing new - bunch of people trapped in a building being hunted by monsters that no one has noticed before.

Add wooden acting, and that the next-to-zero budget has resulted in some of the silliest monsters (men in rubber suits with scorpion tales) and this really has very little going for it.

Well, that is unless you enjoy laughing and have like-minded friends. This is a film to show in a horror marathon, especially one where you are playing horror movie bingo*.

If you watch this without even the slightest intention of taking it seriously this can be very entertaining. It's a movie to interact with, to shout at the TV screen and let the characters know what they're doing wrong, to poke fun at the implausible plot, the crappy sets. Above all else it's fun. And there are times when that's exactly what you need.

Page uploaded 18 July, 2010