User Reviews

I had heard nothing about this film before it came up in the TV listings. I hadn't even seen it on the shelves of my local DVD store. I read the write-up on the TV and it looked interesting and so I decided to watch it. Not the best film of its type, but still quite a good watch, but more of that later, here's a brief synopsis.

Three people board an elevator in an old apartment building. It is a holiday weekend and most of the residents have gone away. The elevator rises past the ninth floor and then a power outage leaves it stuck between nine and ten. As time passes we learn about the three occupants. Karl is a surgeon; he has a young daughter and is grieving for his wife who had died tragically. Claudia is asthmatic, a student who is worried about her grandmother who has a terminal illness. Tommy, who has bruised knuckles has come from his girlfriend, Francesca's house and is in a hurry. They do all the usual things, press the alarm button, open the doors and shout, but to no avail. We are told in flashback the events that led these three to be on this elevator and it makes for some interesting revelations, especially when we discover one particularly gruesome secret that makes one of them very dangerous. But, of course, I'm not going to give that away, so I'll leave it here.

This is quite a tense claustrophobic drama that unfolds into an exciting thriller in the end. I like the way the back-stories of the three main characters slowly unfold, which adds to the tension. Decent performances from the entire main cast, so honourable mentions go to Amber Tamblyn as Claudia, Aidan Gillen as Karl, Armie Hammer as Tommy and Katie Stuart as Francesca.

This version has a running time of only 82 minutes which, I felt, was just right. Any longer and I think I may have got bored. As I said at the beginning, it's not the best film of its type, but having said that, I did find it quite entertaining and pretty gruesome in places. So, it's not one for the feint hearted, but quite an interesting film none the less. Recommended.

My score: 6.3/10

I always hunting for some horror all around the globe, now and then you find some trash sometimes you find some beauties. This movie was available for a few Euro's so I guessed I was buying some boring trash. Lucky me, it wasn't. First of all, it is a bit of a slow starter. You will learn to know three people. Nothing to do with each other only that they live in the same apartment. For no reason at all they wait for the elevator to bring them home. But the elevator brakes down with the three in it. Due a black out. What happens next is flashbacks of their live and the reason why they want to get out of the elevator as soon as possible. Why, watch the movie. You won't see coming what will happen. The performances are really well done especially the doctor. But is it a real horror flick. I don't think so, it's more suspense with a little horror twist in it. It never is gory but it contains blood and CGI. But the CGI never attracts the attention. There is also some nudity in it for you freaks out there. Overall the movie was a nice surprise to see, can't understand why some people say it was boring.

First of all this is not a horror movie! I've sat trough this entire movie waiting for the 'horror' but it never came. This movie is really, really bad. I don't mean that in a cool Michael Jackson-1987- music video type of way. This movie is more a thriller, with a lot of drama in it. The movie is one hour and ten minutes. To me it felt like it was over two hours. A terrible script made it impossible for me to like this movie.

The movie is about three people who are stuck in an elevator. As time goes by things get crazier and crazier. The plot itself is a big plothole. Without giving it away, in this day and age, it's simply not possible to get stuck in an elevator like that. The viewer will notice this along the way, and this certainly doesn't do the credibility of this movie any good.

For a movie that is straight to DVD I was pleasantly surprised with the visuals. Not once, did I get the feeling that this is a struggling movie. It's beautifully shot. The tone is dark. You could see the director put time and effort in the making of this movie.

The first minutes looked promising but then something changed. It began showing flashbacks. I was cool with this because it gave a little backstory on the characters. But the flashbacks kept going on and on in this movie. The problem with this is that it killed the pacing of this movie. It almost felt like I was watching drama. It wasn't what I expected of this movie and there was almost no real suspense till near the end.

The dialogue is cloggy a lot of the times and interesting some of the times. Acting was bad on some parts in the beginning and got better after I think 20 minutes. As a matter of fact, one character annoyed me endlessly .The movie tries to develop the characters but doesn't do a good job. Because it's so slow paced, I lost interest in the characters. The backstories just aren't interesting.

I didn't like the 'big revelation' near the end. You know the part of the movie where all the pieces of the puzzles fit together. I expected something bigger and intriguing. I was searching for some redemption, some reward for sitting trough this mess, but it was so predictable and rushed.

Bottom line: It's garbage. A big, smelly one. With a bunch of flies on it.

2/10

From the needless prologue and the bewildering opening titles that follow, it's clear from the outset that this film doesn't have much potential. And, to confirm such fears, for not one minute of its 85 does this film offer one moment of suspense, one glimmer of shrewd writing, one ounce of meaningful plot development or a single second of entertainment.

The plot concerns three people who become trapped in a lift, and whilst trying to battle their way out, they soon begin battling each other. Unfortunately, not soon enough, as almost the entire film is spent flashing back through the characters' histories, building up completely pointless back-stories in the hope of an emotional climax that never comes to fruition.

Following the remarkably ridiculous serial-killer twist that finally emerges, one can't help wondering which is more painful: 20 hours in a lift with a madman, or an hour and a half in front of this trash. This film receives 1 star out of 10, and it's all for Amber Tamblyn – the only actor that didn't make me want to smash my skull into the floor.

Lacking a storyline, it must be difficult to develop a movie...Add poor acting to an incredibly poor screenplay and the result is 'Blackout'...The entire storyline of this movie could have (should have) been a single scene within a real movie... I'm not sure what the point to this movie was ...or if it even tried to have one, except perhaps that even semi-ordinary people can be horrible human beings...Three losers get stuck on a rickety old elevator and one is a murderous a-hole, while the other two are simply uncaring jerks...This one's not even worth a watch on TV...Just a poor, long, drawn-out scene that literally 'goes nowhere'...(except down)...Avoid this one...just wait on the next one...it would have to be better than this...

This is one of those movies you find by accident and are happy you decided to watch it despite it's low rating - proving once again that IMDb ratings are not very enlightening :)

Great acting all round, very well directed with a tight and tense plot that keeps you on the edge of your seat. It doesn't try to be too clever or delve into silly red herrings/plot twists (tho it does successfully muddy the waters for a while - but that is integral to the plot). I liked the camera work and the fact that it wasn't all shot in the dark so you could see the characters expressions etc. The darkness kicked in when the plot became darker. Nice effect. I also liked the score as it added depth to the tense moments and the director used the setting expertly to develop a sense of claustrophobia.

Ignore the bad reviews (and the cheapish titles sequence which almost stopped me watching any further - luckily I decided to give it a bit more time). This is worth watching.

Such a low rating on IMDb! I don't write many reviews but feel compelled to write a short one (if IMDb allowed me to) to redress the balance. Blackout was one of the best movies I've seen in the past 6 months. The best thing about the movie is that you don't know what's going to happen next - unlike the rubbish, yawn inducing "thriller" Lakeview Terrace. It is violent & disturbing in parts - especially against women so wouldn't recommend it as a date movie. All the actors were good with the protagonist being particularly menacing! It's not laden with special effects - it doesn't need to be. It's a thriller, not a horror but unlike some movies is thrilling.

'Blackout' is one of those obscure little multinational affairs that can either be jaw-droppingly bad or a rare unearthed gem - happily, it's the latter. Three characters are trapped overnight in a stalled elevator, bickering and bitching as they try and find a way out while thinking back to the sequence of events that led them there. These 'Lost'-style flashbacks eventually reveal that one of their number is a vicious sociopath.

It's clear that Mexican director Castaneda is influenced more by the character driven horror of the sixties and seventies than by vapid eighties slashers, but his interest in people shouldn't be mistaken for squeamishness when it comes to ugly sexual violence - it's been a long time since I wanted to see a bad guy get what he deserves as much as I did watching 'Blackout'. Castaneda uses more than a few moves from the David Fincher play-book, with the camera squeezing through keyholes and cracks and plummeting down elevator shafts, and the whole thing is beautifully photographed, belying what was in truth a meager budget of only $4 million. A great psychological thriller from a director who deserves success.

BLACKOUT is another low budget B-movie thriller with bags of potential but little thought process gone into the execution. Thus this is a film that looks cheap throughout, and which becomes boring not long after you start watching. This is because the whole movie is padded out with flashbacks to explore the characters of the three people trapped in the lift, flashbacks which add little except to increase the running time.

Cast-wise, the film is in firm hands with the presence of Aidan Gillen (GAME OF THRONES), but sadly the actors can't do a lot with what are relatively one dimensional characters. There's violence here but very little suspense, and the dark cinematography fails to make much of the setting or indeed to bring out the claustrophobia inherent in the situation. For a better trapped-in-a-lift movie, check out ELEVATOR.

One of the great things about having access to Netflix's "Watch Instantly" feature is that (of course) you can watch movies without having to wait on a disc to arrive via snail mail.

Sometimes you'll stumble across unexpected gems that come in the form of obscure indie films. My experience, however, has been that I usually end up being suckered into movies that are a complete waste of time. Enter Blackout, a low-budget psychological horror/thriller from director Rigoberto Castaneda (yeah, I'd never heard of him either).

The story is this: a trio of strangers becomes trapped in an elevator when a citywide power outage cripples Los Angeles. What's especially dire about this group's situation is that their apartment building is undergoing heavy renovations, which means that there are only a handful of tenants who could possibly hear their cries for help.

If you're like me, this sounds like a brilliantly simple setup that could only result in a great horror movie. My first thought was that days of existing in a dark elevator would expose the occupants' inner demons, which would accompany a chilling set of primal instincts that were triggered because of being forced into an extreme survival scenario (this drummed up thoughts of films like The Descent and Cube).

Unfortunately, I was quickly reminded of the other elements that comprise "good" movies. You know, things like an engaging narrative and characters that I actually care about.

As you've no doubt guessed by the categorization of this critique, none of these things are found in Blackout. Instead, we're given a series of flashbacks that shed very little light on the main characters' motivations. In fact, the indication that one of the elevator's inhabitants is a serial killer does little to generate tension, as each are shockingly wooden in their respective roles. There's even a red herring thrown our way in the form of an absurdly "emo" teen, but the ensuing flashback connected to said angst-laden youth informs us that he is, in fact, a good kid. Not only is this strangely irrelevant to what's happening in the idle elevator, it also completely destroys any sense of mystique that might have otherwise existed around our tattooed/pierced anti-hero.

And then there's the setting of the film. Given the title, one would be safe in assuming that a large portion of the film was shot in the dark, right? I mean, this is the kind of thing a director would want to do because—if done correctly—it would create a sense of claustrophobia, which would be entirely appropriate given the nature of a movie about a group of people stuck in an elevator.

Oddly enough, this is a very well-lighted movie. It's not until the very end that shadows seem to envelop the doomed elevator, and even then the proceedings are entirely too bright.

What starts off as film built on a great premise quickly descends into the worst sort of horror fare: the boring sort. In order to save you an 85 minutes that you'll desperately wish you could have back, go for another "Watch Instantly" option that's actually entertaining and creative. I'd recommend 2008′s Splinter. It's about a murderous "splinter parasite" that traps an escaped convict (along with his girlfriend and a couple they've taken hostage) in a gas station. Yes— it's every bit as awesome as it sounds.

It should be said that the stage was set up for a potentially great thriller here; three strangers trapped in an elevator during a blackout, one of which is carrying a deadly secret.

So why am I rating "Blackout" a mere four out of ten stars? Well, because director Rigoberto Castañeda didn't manage to establish a working sense of claustrophobia, even when every ingredient was served on a platter. As such, the movie suffered terribly.

Another aspect that dragged the movie down was the lack of properly detailed characters. The audience were given a series of random flashbacks to each character, but these just told why the people were in the elevator, not adding any layers to whom they were, except for the killer.

The acting in "Blackout" was adequate, but Aidan Gillen was carrying the majority of the movie with his performance. You might actually say that this was his movie singlehandedly.

"Blackout" ended up as a below average thriller, which was a shame because it really did have potential to be so much more.

Much better than I expected it to be. There are a few movies about being trapped in an elevator and this is one that managed to keep me interested. Glad I watched it.

I saw Blackout (IV) (2008) this morning, not to be confused withfhe other movie( Blackout (2008) Director: Jukka-Pekka Siili).

This Blackout (2008) was Director: Rigoberto Castañeda!

Three people from different walks of life, find themselves trapped inside a stalled elevator. What at first seems like an inconvenience rapidly escalates into a nightmare.

I enjoyed the movie Devil, which came out two years after this movie, I thought I would enjoy this movie as well and I did !

It was really good movies (it's not a horror movie at all but more of a Thriller ), this movie is really entertaining and really good, as some intense moments and the acting from short cast was surprisingly good, much better then i thought they would be.

The Downside of the movie.

The First half movie was really well made, it was tad realistic but second half movie went in slightly different way, which change the tone of the movie a bit. which I did not like at all.

And the end, had some really Poor CGI effects (which don't normal bother me), in this movie, its just looks total out of place. 5 out 10 Good movie

If you liked Devil you should give this a watch! (I think Devil a slight bit better then this movie)

This was another movie that Neflix had listed under Horror films so I figured I would watch it. This is one of those movies that feels like it is longer than it actually is and is actually somewhat difficult to sit though. It isn't that it wasn't good at all it's that I didn't really care for the characters. As in I didn't care who died and who lived. Also this movie was quite predictable and I didn't really get shocked from anything in it which is never good in a Horror movie in my honest opinion. Although I didn't give this a high rating I still liked some parts. I give "Blackout" a 5 out of 10

~Joe