Black Friday (2021)

directed by Casey Tebo

USA

84 minutes

3 stars out of 5

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I watched this on Black Friday when it came out, but - despite it being right there in the title - this makes for a seasonally appropriate watch anytime between Thanksgiving and the week of Christmas. I think "pre-Christmas" movies such as this one, that take place during the holiday season but don't actually feature any scenes on Christmas, are my preferred type of holiday movie. Everyone celebrates differently, and some don't celebrate at all, but we can all get behind how much Christmas shopping sucks. And while the inherent fun of watching a movie on the day the movie takes place adds something to the mix even for a sub-par film, Black Friday holds up anyway, at least for the most part.

What I'm going to call "Customer Service Revenge" has been experiencing somewhat of a renaissance in recent years, and like most things, the sub-genre's strength lies solely in how relatable it is. There's a very fine line between empathizing and patronizing when it comes to this kind of thing: It's usually easy to tell if something was made or written by someone who hasn't actually had to deal with demon customers a day in their life. But I can't really tell where Black Friday falls on that spectrum, because to me it felt almost messageless - I don't mean that it's bland, but it doesn't quite rise to the heights of stuff like 2017's Mayhem or the more obscure Redd Inc. The concept here is just a sort of broadly relatable "we hate our jobs" with no deeper dive into the systems that make those jobs so horrible (and low-paying, physically harmful, psychologically damaging, et cetera). It doesn't go after anybody. It doesn't look at why things are, it just gets mad that they are. I'm not saying it really needs to do that; not every film has to hash out its stance on capitalism, but I felt like in this case Black Friday was being oddly restrained and I would have loved to see it get even crazier than it did.

The plot is a generic alien mutation affair, not terribly concerned with the specifics, people just sorta get all melty and weird after coming into the proximity of an unexplained ball of goo that fell from the sky. Personally I love that - don't explain the mystery meteor that turns people into goop zombies and summons a towering amalgam of Karens from the ninth circle of hell. It's enough to know that it came from outer space and is making people go berserk. Like a lot of people, I watched this for Bruce Campbell first and foremost, but after that I watched it for the practical effects, and oh boy, I wasn't disappointed. This is a perfect example of time-tested practical effects goodness in the year of our germy lord 2021: The same methods, the same materials, but even more artistry behind it, and the ability to supplement - not supplant - it with CGI. What results from that is a glorious cesspool of clumpy space flesh, exploding heads, purply ooze, and all your favorites. Even though it really goes all-out with the aforementioned mega-Karen in the last act, Black Friday still uses a light enough touch that I feel good calling this a Practical Effects Movie™.

But it's really not, like, super great. There's something off about the characters, and I read somebody speculating that a lot of the dialogue may have been improvised, which could have explained it. The dialogue itself isn't bad, but nobody feels as defined as they should have - it's a smattering of personality traits distributed unevenly across the board, with some people getting backstory and others getting virtually none, even if they had relatively large roles. I'm kind of uncomfortable with the joke that gets brought up once or twice about "Corporate says Black Friday was racist, so it's Green Friday now". The fact that the movie is called Black Friday and all signage and dialogue within the film itself refers to Black Friday as Black Friday makes it very apparent that the film views attempts at anti-racism as a joke, at least a little bit. That just felt really unnecessary and I'm not sure where it was coming from. It didn't have to be brought up at all.

I don't know if it has rewatch value, but it's one of the better holiday-type movies I've seen recently as we prepare for the onslaught of abysmal Christmas films that always pop up around now. Bruce Campbell is genuinely great, although he's not in it that much, and while, as I said, I felt like this movie was playing it safe a little too much, it's still a pretty good time.