‘Black Widows’ is a Failure of Horror and Comedy (Review)

Written by: Daniel Hadley

Directed by: Venita Ozals-Graham

Cast: Brigette Graham, Shelby Kolcee, Jordan Elizabeth

Opening up much like American Psycho 2, with some pretty obnoxious narration that led to my head sinking deep into my hands as my expectations were smashed to pieces with the mallet of shitty writing, Black Widows took what could have been an enjoyable premise and preceded to suck any life out of it with an onslaught of overbearing dullness.

So the story goes, three best friends decide to get revenge on a rapist. Then a series of unfortunate events leads to all of their lovers losing their lives. Those are the nuts and bolts to the film and it appears that nuts and bolts were the only things used in this films construction, as it falls to pieces fairly quickly. So according to this movie all men are abusive misogynistic pigs who deserve to die. Now movies don’t have to be realistic, that’s fine, and if a film wants to paint half the earth’s population as monsters then that’s fine with me. I have heard people accuse this movie of having an anti-male agenda but where it paints men as pigs it also paints women as vindictive sociopaths and cop killers, so I didn’t really care whether it does or doesn’t, as it isn’t really pertinent to its overall lack of quality.

You would be mistaken in thinking this was a Lifetime Original movie with its lack of competent direction, writing, acting and camera work, but that may be being a bit too harsh. It does also try to be funny, and try as hard as it might it fails again and again. If you recorded all of the deep sighs I let out during its runtime and sped them up it might sound like laughter, but that would be the closest this film got. I don’t think I even smiled, the movie was just so dull. Now I may come across as somewhat contrarian as I looked up some reviews on IMDB and Amazon and to my surprise they were all glowingly positive. What the hell am I missing? What reality altering, perception distorting goggles are out there to make this movie appear to be a perfect ten, up there with the greatest of black comedies? Why did I find it so boring, so dull, so… well shit, I don’t know… but I appear to be in the minority.

I think the actors were trying give good performances but given that their line delivery was so bland it was hard to believe that anyone could give such a performance unless it was very much on purpose. Same goes for the rest of the production really. This is just an exceptionally boring movie. I think that it wanted to be a quirky horror comedy but it failed at both. It’s also one of those movies that is trying to be smart. Unfortunately its smarts come with enormous logical leaps. I suppose triple homicide is smart when you live in a universe free of consequence.

This was somewhat of a rambling review, as this movie doesn’t really warrant much discussion or critique. This is a very boring and dull affair, I would advise you to steer clear… but apparently I’m the only one who disliked this movie, so maybe you should give it a shot, as I apparently failed to see its greatness.

Just remember “black widows kill their mates.” The truth is, they actually don’t, most of the time. But I suppose Preying Mantis’s would have been a stupid title.

Rating: 1/5