Director/Screenplay – Larry Fessenden, Producers – Larry Fessenden, Chris Ingvordsen & James Felix McKenney, Photography – Colin Brazie, Music – Will Bates, Visual Effects – Eugene Lehnert, Makeup Effects – Gerner and Spears Effects (Design – Peter Gerner & Brian Spears), Production Design – Linnea Crabtree. Production Company – Glass Eye Pix.
Cast
Alex Hurt (Charley Barrett), Addison Timlin (Sharon Hammond), Marshall Bell (Jack Hammond), Motell Gyn Foster (Earl), Joseph Castillo-Midyett (Luis Sanchez), John Speredakos (Pastor Francis), Barbara Crampton (Kate), Ella Rae Peck (Alice), James Le Gros (Tom Granick), Marc Senter (Ernie), Cody Kostro (Burt), Joe Swanberg (Stuart), Jeremy Holm (Harry), Michael Buscemi (Andy), Kevin Corrigan (Bob Kraus), Gaby Leyner (Frieda), Javier Rodrigues (Santo), Asta Paredes (Asta), Clay Von Carlowitz (Clay)
Plot
Artist Charley Barrett prepares to leave Talbot Falls following his break-up with Sharon Hammond, the daughter of local developer Jack Hammond, who hates Charley. Charley leaves a box of legal papers from among his late father’s things with the lawyer Kate, knowing that they contain information that they can incriminate Hammond. At the same time, there have been a series of killings around the town. As Charley is driving, the full moon comes up and he transforms into a wolf. Realising he is responsible for the attacks, Charley tries to find a way of stopping the werewolf within himself.
Larry Fessenden is an independent genre director who has been making a name for himself since the late 1990s, delivering a series of strong horror films, even if most of them remain under the mainstream commercial radar. Fessenden began with the low-budget films No Telling (1991) and the vampire film Habit (1997), before graduating to the better budgeted Wendigo (2001), the environmental horror The Last Winter (2006), the monster movie Beneath (2013) and the Frankenstein film Depraved (2019), as well as making the N is for Nexus segment of ABCs of Death 2 (2014) and the Fever episode of Isolation (2021).
Larry Fessenden has covered most of the major horror themes in the films he has directed – Habit was his vampire film, Beneath a variant on the killer shark film, Depraved a Frankenstein film, while Blackout is his take on the werewolf film. Glass Eye Pix had previously made a modern werewolf film with the excellent Late Phases.
The werewolf film has been with us ever since the silent era, although the work that defined the genre was the Lon Chaney Jr starring The Wolf Man (1941). The werewolf languished in the arena of the B movie for several decades before undergoing some major revisions with The Howling (1981) and An American Werewolf in London (1981) that modernised themes and ran them through a battery of makeup transformation effects. There have been a number of films since from B movies to more thoughtful explorations of themes – I have a full essay on the topic here at Werewolf Films.
Alex Hurt transforms into a werewolf
Fessenden’s most recent films, Depraved and Blackout, feel as though they are lacking the drive and fiercely original ideas that earlier classics like Habit and The Last Winter had. In this regard, Blackout does nothing to reinvent the werewolf genre so much as simply retell it. The plot is a fairly standard one – a series of attacks around a small town (which is named Talbot Falls, no doubt in homage to Lon Chaney Jr’s Larry Talbot in The Wolf Man), where the protagonist of the show makes the realisation that they are a werewolf. There is nothing that Fessenden places on this that is new and has not been done elsewhere. The film does perhaps aim for a snapshot of racial Trump-era politics with the Mexican immigrant cheap labour being blamed for the spate of killings by a lynch mob, but this never emerges as a particularly potent political message.
The werewolf makeup is also one that never goes beyond a facial appliance and some claws – in its favour, the closeups of the mask do have an undeniable ferocity. Directorially, much of Blackout is another of Fessenden’s films that builds through incidental detail – the interactions of the various characters around the town takes up the first third and seem largely talk-heavy with no horror elements. Fessenden arrives at some reasonable scenes as the werewolf attacks during the latter third.
Fessenden has the benefit of a good cast. Lead actor, the tall lanky Alex Hurt is the son of actor William Hurt – you can see childhood photos of father and son in the background at various points. Fessenden/Glass Eye regular James Le Gros and genre legend Barbara Crampton both give fine performances in small roles. Surprisingly, this is one of Fessenden’s films in which he doesn’t make an acting appearance.
Blackout is not related and should not be confused with several other films with the same title, including the genre likes of The Blackout (2009) about people in apartment facing monsters that appear during a power cut and the Russian alien invasion film The Blackout (2019).
