Black Friday (84 minutes)
"You know the worst thing about holiday shoppers? They can never accept the fact that the night is over."
Welcome back to The 90-Minute Movie! The newsletter where short runtimes rule and long runtimes miss something important while they’re going to the bathroom. Seriously though, if your movie is going to be 210 minutes, we have to bring back intermissions. I’m hydrated AF. Also to put this into terms money-hungry men might understand: think of all the additional concessions you’ll sell! It’s just good sense for both our bladders and your wallets. Something to think about.
Hey, we’re coming up fast on the holiday season! Give your friends a FREE gift and share this newsletter with them. They’ll be all: “Oh my god, how did you know I can’t sit still for longer than 90 minutes?!” And you’ll be a hero for free.
Last week’s post on Father of the Bride (1991, 105 minutes) was a hit, so naturally I need to follow it up with a Thanksgiving movie no one’s ever heard of. I don’t want any of you getting too comfortable around here, thinking I’m only writing about the greats. No, I’m writing about everything. And this week that means Black Friday (2021, 84 minutes). I’ve never really understood how Christmas has roughly a million movies produced about it, but Thanksgiving struggles to even break, like, 20. I am so consumed by this misrepresentation that I wrote a horror movie with my husband set during Thanksgiving. (It is called Harvest and it actually won the screenplay competition at the Big Apple Film Fest. NBD!) I look every year for Thanksgiving movies that will finally stand-up to Big Christmas. I don’t think Black Friday is that movie, but it is a fun entry into B-movie horror that deserves to be talked about.
Our movie of the week takes place on Thanksgiving night and on to Black Friday (hence the title)-- the notorious shopping holiday of the United States. A group of retail workers arrive on their shifts only to quickly realize that something is very wrong with their shoppers. The audience however is well aware that a gooey alien lifeform is taking over the bodies of people, and turning them into zombie-like killers. Soon the mismatched group of employees are fighting for their lives as the alien-zombies take over their store and start building something suspicious.
Black Friday was neutrally reviewed by big sites like Ebert and the NY Times, but both sites boil down the practical effects to almost a gimmick, when in fact the prosthetics and monster work are some of the more impressive elements of the movie (as is the cinematography by David Kruta). The legendary Robert Kurtzman and his team were called in to do all of the effects. Kurtzman is a BUSY man and has worked on everything from Scream to Vanilla Sky to The Haunting of Hill House. He worked on From Dusk Till Dawn which he also happened to co-write with Quentin Tarantino. Yes, he IS that girl. Fangoria has a great interview with him if you want to learn more about him, his work on Black Friday, and why practical effects are so great. The people-to-creature transformations look awesome and are just the right amount of nauseating. It helps that Kruta’s skilled lighting makes everything look incredible and realistic.
Outside of its visual assets, the movie struggles a little to move along and keep us engaged. The script is just ok and because of this the actors have to work pretty hard for us. The cast is an excellent line-up of horror movie greats (Bruce Campbell, Devon Sawa), action heroes (Michael Jai White), former child actors (Ryan Lee, Ivana Baquero) and newcomers (Stephen Peck, Louie Kurtzman) and whoever envisioned this blend for casting did an excellent job. But chemistry falls flat because the script spends too much time trying to show us how similar they are (aka trapped in a dead end job) rather than really celebrate their differences. It’s not totally devoid of meaningful moments, but there isn’t enough meat to make a full sandwich. I also have to wonder if part of this lack of chemistry comes from the fact that the movie was shot in 2020 during COVID. Sets were at limited capacity and there were restrictions about who was where when and more. I can imagine the steadfast rules of a pandemic can be limiting to building rapport with your cast.
Despite its shortcomings, the struggle of shooting during a pandemic and its limited budget, the gang behind Black Friday manages to make a solid horror film that is fun to watch when you’re feeling a bit angry about retail workers having to go in on Thanksgiving night to shill crap for major corporations. Though its commentary is a little soft, it will definitely still scratch that itch. The team also managed to call in some fun favors to friends tapping Patrick Stump of Fall Out Boy fame to do the music, and Seth Green to be the voice of “the toy of the season” Dour Dennis. A toy that I very much would like to own.
Hadn’t heard of this movie, Amanda, but anything with Bruce Campbell in it is worth a watch so I’ll need to check it out 👍🏼