A good idea for a suspense thriller -- a young attorney wakes up one morning to find a murdered woman in his bathroom, and must unravel how she got there and who is behind it -- gets muddled by an amateurish production in this well photographed but chaotic movie from Wilmington, North Carolina. After another dead body appears in his apartment, it seems that Harley Roberts (Timothy Woodward, Jr.) is doing the killing. We try hard to agonize with him as he opts not to contact the police but figure out whodunit but red herrings pop up -- his best friend is willing to dispose of the bodies with him, the apartment building super is sinister and even attempts to implicate Harley in the killings, and Harley's materialistic fiancée is suspect. The actual resolution to Harley's nerve-wracking situation is confusing and sophomoric, and the tale's opportunities for suspense are squandered time and again. The movie's primary saboteurs are director Matthew K. Hacker, who tries for a Hitchcock-type of WRONG MAN-like thriller but foils any attempt at building suspense, aided by poor editing. He is not helped by screenwriter Pia Cook's dull scenario and bland dialog. Only a few scenes stand out -- Harley's discovery of the bodies and a strange sex scene in which Harley is fixated on a blank TV screen while his fiancée bumps and grinds on top of him, oblivious. The cast is okay, with Woodward effective in quieter scenes although his character is unlikable; Chelsea Reeves and Bill Oberst, Jr., are adequate as the fiancée and the sinister manager, respectively; but Robert Covington is terrible as the best friend, who also spews an incoherent exposition right in the middle of a very poorly staged fist fight during the movie's finale. Worst of all is the music score, which almost never stops droning and does its utmost to kill what little suspense exists. Revealing the movie's amateur-hour status are odd end credits that purport special thanks to Hitchcock, tipping Hacker's hand, as well as Stephen King, Michael Bay, and various miscellaneous celebrities unconnected to the picture.

This film is a tough one to review, the story/plot was good but the main character and a couple of other actors in this movie were just not believable in their emotions and the characters they played.This movie read as though everybody were just running their lines at a rehearsal.Also the background music overpowered the dialog which can be very annoying. With that said, I believe that everyone in this film has the potential to do better with time. Take Liam Neeson,his acting went from bad to superb.You have to give credit where credit is due and they deserve some credit for trying. Who knows what the future will hold for these upcoming stars!

This movie is terrible. I'm only putting this review out here because everyone should be warned not to waste your time. I've read several reviews on this movie and not one of them is truthful. The acting is awful. Every character in every scene is deplorable. Who wrote this crap? Every word of the script was crap. Other reviewers noted the quality of the camera work and also the quality of the sound track. Both were equally trash. I don't know how I was able to watch the whole thing. It wasn't a bad story but the execution killed it. I don't understand why someone would make such crap and how they could afford to.

Blackout starts out with a few promising scenes. A man with a good job, a hot girlfriend, and a nice apartment finds himself a body at his place, with no recollection of how it got there. The script is well-paced throughout, with just the right touch of suspense and mystery. Although some of the camera work made me think that it was a low-budget independent film, I am pleased with how the film progressed. The character development is fairly believable and the reactions from the protagonists are understandable.I think the movie, however, sells itself a bit short. Some of the side plot scenes are not fully developed, and the last few minutes made me really question the editing choice. What started to feel like a well-paced mystery/thriller/crime movie quickly spiraled into a Hollywood-style twist-based ending, where the "who" became so much more important than "why." The writing becomes so inconsistent in these final moments that I feel like someone else was hired to chop the last few scenes out and replace it with a quick story that I think we've all probably seen before. Mostly, it didn't really make sense, and my suspension of disbelief crumbled into a million pieces.There was also the very last few seconds before the credits rolled that I did not understand at all.However, Black Out is still a fun movie to watch. Just don't expect a radically evolutionary film.