Offers an engaging kink in the well-worn sub-genre of werewolf films, with some deft use of animation and painting.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 22, 2024

Though Larry Fessenden’s werewolf feature starts strong, its attempts at exploring various themes result in an aimless narrative that struggles to tie them together.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Aug 15, 2024

Blackout serves as a solid reminder that various avenues exist to take on depicting a classic myth.

| Original Score: B+ | Jun 1, 2024

Indeed, there’s so much going on here, Blackout sometimes forgets to be a horror movie—that element as well as various character dramas and social-commentary themes all jostle for attention, none getting fully developed as a result.

| Apr 17, 2024

Blackout is my first experience with Fessenden's work and unfortunately it wasn't a good one. The old-school werewolf design was neat but the script is both dull and drawn out. Even the more intense sequences are muddled with a very odd execution.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Apr 16, 2024

Blackout's noble message, interesting material, and ambition are masked by a muddled story that fails to engage the viewer.

| Original Score: 1.5/5 | Apr 15, 2024

The idiosyncratic earnestness of an experienced horrormeister playing with the classics still makes for a substantial midnight snack.

| Apr 15, 2024

Fessenden’s script is thin as wet newspaper, and long, drawn-out sequences of blue-collar workers arguing about nothing in particular bleeds the already boring film dry, much like Charley does to his victims.

| Original Score: 2/10 | Apr 14, 2024

Blackout is insightful, reflective, and achieves genuine emotional weight by its conclusion.

| Original Score: B | Apr 12, 2024

[I]n true Fessenden fashion, the film nods at what has come before it in this subgenre before tossing out the rulebook. It carves out a newer and more intriguing path that is a breath of fresh air.

| Apr 12, 2024

Larry Fessenden has given audiences a brilliant insight  into contemporary America through the lens of monstrosity. Blackout is a melancholy, funny, gore-soaked, and at times, hopeless film about the tragic werewolf and the impulses he cannot control.

| Original Score: B | Apr 12, 2024

Tortured artist howls at the moon while we pine for the film to end.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Apr 10, 2024

Fessenden uses the werewolf trappings to tell a compelling, trenchant allegorical tale that’s both classically satisfying and freshly modern.

| Original Score: B+ | Apr 10, 2024

Hurt’s wounded persona and Fessenden’s portrait of Talbot Falls as a stand-in for America make for a compelling watch in a rare, worthy werewolf movie about a familiar condition of existential despair. 

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 9, 2024

At times the sheer volume of thematic work and supporting characters threatens to leave the film feeling overstuffed, but ultimately it all tracks accurately to real life, where there are no limits to such things.

| Apr 8, 2024

What makes Fessenden’s movies stand out from their kin in whichever niche he chooses to explore is his prioritization of character—every character, from the primary actors to the supporting cast.

| Original Score: 7.9/10 | Apr 4, 2024

...there is no denying the movie’s potency as a metaphor for alcoholism.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 25, 2024

In the parlance of our times: if Larry Fessenden has no more fans, then I am no longer on this Earth.

| Mar 21, 2024

Larry Fessenden loosely grafts topical issues of racial disparity and threats to biodiversity atop a run-of-the-mill werewolf story in anywhere USA.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 15, 2024

“Blackout” is nothing new, or even essential, but it mostly works anyway thanks to Fessenden and his cast’s impressive collaboration.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 14, 2024