Bodies Bodies Bodies meets Bitch Ass in this horror/comedy about the most racist board game since Trump: The Game.

The Blackening looks designed to skewer black representation in the horror genre, but forgets everything it set out to do within the first 10 minutes. It opens promisingly enough, with a couple (Jay Pharoah and Yvonne Orji) discovering the eponymous game which asks them to name any black character who survived a horror movie. So far so Scream.

We then wait another half-hour for the game to reappear (and therefore the film to start), at which point it seems to have exhausted its supply of horror trivia and starts asking questions about Nas lyrics and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. If the writers want to expand its remit from horror to wider black culture, the commentary needs to be fresher than pointing out the lack of black people in Friends.

Meanwhile the film starts by name-checking three movies in about 30 seconds (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The People Under the Stairs, Friday the 13th, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre again) then doesn’t drop another genre reference for the rest of the runtime. Plus it establishes that two characters (Grace Byers and Antoinette Robertson) can communicate telepathically, which also never comes up again. It must be the most forgetful film this side of Memento.

That sense of amnesia means The Blackening is neither about black horror, nor about anything at all. The script fails to subvert the stereotypical characters, instead reinforcing their negative portrayals. There are no interesting relationships or twists à la Bodies Bodies Bodies, and with jokes like, “I thought Black Twitter was a type of seasoning!”, the movie cannot rely on its comedy to carry it either.

As for scares, forget about it. This is a picture so sanitised and safe that even its cabin in the woods setting is luxurious and fitted with glass windows. By the time the killer slips in vomit during its climactic moments, you’ll be reaching for Snakes & Ladders out of sheer boredom.