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The Blackout Experiment

Six strangers wake up inside a room garnished with weapons and are forced to kill each other or watch someone they care deeply about die. Six strangers wake up inside a room garnished with weapons and are forced to kill each other or watch someone they care deeply about die. Six strangers wake up inside a room garnished with weapons and are forced to kill each other or watch someone they care deeply about die.

• John David Moffat IV
• Yasmin Irvine
• 23 User reviews
• 3 Critic reviews
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• Jan 25, 2022
• How long is The Blackout Experiment? Powered by Alexa
• March 15, 2021 (United States)
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• Runtime 1 hour 21 minutes

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The Blackout Experiments takes you inside the most traumatic haunted house of all time

By Bryan Bishop

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I’ve always been a fan of being scared. Even when I was a little kid and my elementary school had a book fair, I didn’t buy Encyclopedia Brown ; I picked up the Dynamite Book of Ghosts and Haunted Houses — because even at that age, getting freaked out of my mind was cathartic in a way I couldn’t really express. That developed over the years (Mr. King and Mr. Barker, please meet my new friend Mr. Lovecraft), and about 10 years ago I discovered the haunted house scene. You know what I’m talking about; the kind of place where you pay $60 to have people with chainsaws chase you into tiny rooms filled with fake body parts. But you can only see so many Leatherfaces before it starts getting goofy, which is how the New York-based production Blackout got on my radar.

If you’re not familiar with Blackout, it’s something that its creators call "immersive theater." People sign a waiver absolving Blackout from any responsibility should anything happen to them, and walk alone through a darkened space where… things happen. Violent things. Sexual things. Degrading things. Things that take it far from the realm of "Oh look, there’s a guy with a Freddy Krueger glove," and into the territory of "This place has a safeword policy and if you suffer from PTSD you probably shouldn’t go." But despite (or perhaps because of) its nefarious reputation, I haven’t experienced Blackout myself, so when I saw that a new documentary called The Blackout Experiments was going to be at Sundance, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to find out if this experience was something I was going to be interested in.

Fox relies on plenty of horror gimmicks to set the tone

Directed and edited by Rich Fox, Experiments follows a handful of different individuals in Los Angeles as they try Blackout and either swear it off forever, or keep going back again… and again… and again. Fox does capture some footage of what happens inside the mysterious attraction, and he uses plenty of horror movie gimmicks to set the tone. Static randomly glitches through video footage, and disturbing sound design punctuates every scene. But at first, the footage of Blackout itself doesn’t seem that scary in the conventional sense. There’s brief glimpses as the film’s primary subject, a man named Russell Eaton, is literally grabbed off the street and dragged into his first Blackout experience — afterwards he’s dumped onto the sidewalks of downtown Los Angeles, only partially clothed — but the moments seem so outlandish it’s hard to believe this is something that actually exists, much less has a following.

It’s when Fox takes us inside the minds of his subjects that the real story of The Blackout Experiments unfolds. Eaton and the other subjects walk us through their trepidation and anxiety in the days leading up to their experiences — through a series of emails, questionnaires, and strategically withheld information, the team behind Blackout seem to do as much work building anxiety before their events as during — and the almost addictive reaction many of the guests have afterwards. Blackout appears to be a psychological experience above all else, in which attendees are degraded, suffocated, insulted, and rendered utterly submissive, but they find camaraderie with other "survivors", building a support network to talk about their shared experiences that starts to feel like something out of Fight Club .

Blackout survivors start sounding like members of Fight Club

That feeling is only strengthened as the harrowing intensity of the sessions is ratcheted up, and the content becomes increasingly tailored to target the specific fears and foibles of each individual. Fox captures these later events in increasing amounts of detail, from invite-only shows, and eventually to a terrifying in-home assault his main subjects receive that is designed to convince them they don’t need Blackout shows at all to help them confront their darkest fears.

Even if it was all fabricated, it would still make for fascinating viewing, but Fox and his team insist that the documentary is "100 percent real" — and having seen Eaton speak after a screening of the film, it seems very much to be the case. Of course, the film was made in conjunction with Josh Randall and Kristjan Thor, the creators of Blackout, and could no doubt be criticized as a commercial for the shows (as much as anything that shows attendees being smothered and waterboarded could be considered a commercial). But it’s the subjects of The Blackout Experiments that make the film so compelling, as they struggle with their attraction to the experience, the fear and paranoia it instills in them, and eventually, reach a strange kind of peace and decide to leave it behind.

If that peace will last, however, will be answered outside of the confines of the movie. After the screening I attended, Eaton confessed that he’d been considering attending the next round of shows in Los Angeles, but that he hadn’t bought a ticket… yet.

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Home » Horror News » The Blackout Experiments (Sundance Review)

The Blackout Experiments (Sundance Review)

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

PLOT: A group of people become obsessed with an experience called “Blackout” – which is supposed to stimulate your deepest fears and leave you forever changed.

REVIEW: For the last few weeks, the publicists behind THE BLACKOUT EXPERIMENTS have been sending me emails and press kits promising that the film is 100% factual and a full-fledged documentary. Having seen the finished movie for myself, not only do I highly doubt that claim, but even worse – I couldn’t care less if it is or not.

Nauseatingly, the so-called “survivors” of these experiences start support groups, creating their own victim narratives for experiences they shelled-out money for and choose to relive over and over. If any of this were real, the participants would be far more interesting, with each having too-neat character arc, with our main protagonist being a middle-aged man who’s able to come to a lame epiphany from being tortured for a few hours. It’s like S&M without the titillation.

If this were real, than director Rich Fox would be guilty of exploiting some really pathetic, deeply sick individuals, and even if they sign waivers, none of what “Blackout” is shown to do would be legal – so if this were real they’d likely all be in trouble. Of course, it’s all a scam, similar to the way THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES tried to pull one over on audiences.

As such, I guess that means it’s “OK” for Fox’s BLACKOUT EXPERIMENTS to be so dull and lifeless as it’s “real”. Absolutely nothing interesting happens throughout, and this is certainly the longest eighty minutes I can recall spending in a theater since maybe THE GALLOWS last summer. Early on, our lead is supposed to have gotten his forehead tattooed with the Blackout moniker, but by the next scene it’s gone without any explanation. Shots are also far too neatly set up to be convincing as reality, and while the filmmakers are certainly allowed to try and pull one over on the audience, the goal here should have really been to make a film that’s entertaining rather than dull – which this ultimately is.

It’s actually quite shocking that something as lame as THE BLACKOUT EXPERIMENTS got into a festival like Sundance, where the midnight selections are usually so carefully curated. With so many other promising genre voices out there, it’s a shame a slot was wasted on this prank of a film. And you know what – even if I’m wrong and somehow this is real, it’s still really boring.

About the Author

Chris Bumbray began his career with JoBlo as the resident film critic (and James Bond expert) way back in 2007, and he has stuck around ever since, being named editor-in-chief in 2021. A voting member of the CCA and a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, you can also catch Chris discussing pop culture regularly on CTV News Channel.

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The Blackout Experiments

Can traumatizing yourself make you feel good? That’s one question that horror documentary “The Blackout Experiments” asks, but never satisfactorily answers. Director Rich Fox spends much of his film painting a portrait of the emotional haze that thrill-seekers go through before and after participating in Blackout, an aggressive haunted house-type attraction. I’ve never participated in Blackout, but based on “The Blackout Experiments,” I can tell you that it’s an intense, aggressively confrontational and deeply disturbing recreational experience. Participants are physically attacked, tied up, screamed at and sometimes even branded. 

Still, despite its obvious unpleasantness, Blackout leaves some participants wanting more. Fox is most interested in the people—many who remain nameless. His subjects include Russell, a middle-aged man with no nuclear family to speak of, who has been through the wringer, and now sees the world through hyper-sensitive eyes. There are other characters in the film, and some of them are fairly articulate, but Russell is the most well-developed of Fox’s subjects. He participates in a by-invitation-only survivor’s group, sharing his experiences with fellow Blackout participants. He’s also been through four separate trials in Blackout.

Before we go further, I should probably say: I’m still not sure how to process “The Blackout Experiments.” Normally I’d take that uncertainty as a good sign, but I’m not so sure. Fox takes great pains to replicate the feelings and sensations that Blackout participants go through. He films his subjects talking about their experiences in talking-head interviews that present them in a pitch-black room, harshly front-lit by what looks like a single light source. And he presents Blackout footage in snippets, creating a disorienting effect. Fox is not just reporting what it’s like to go through Blackout—he’s simulating it in order to allow viewers at home to make up their own minds. Is Blackout a cathartic experience, or a funhouse for jaded masochists?

Russell gets us closer to answering that question than anyone else in “The Blackout Experiments.” His commentary is guarded, but his drive to do more is intriguing. Russell is forced to read a script, one that makes him sound like a sexual submissive talking about his dominant lover. In these prepared speeches, he declares that he is a willing participant who gives permission to his captors to do whatever they want with him. They then tattoo him, scream at him, bind his hands, and make him participate in various degrading acts. 

The harm that’s caused to Russell appears to be predominantly psychological. He fills out a disclaimer that absolves Blackout of any wrong-doing, but Russell’s not necessarily an eager participant. We see him hesitantly counting the days until he can participate in his next Blackout trial. He doesn’t know what happened to him during Blackout, but he’s compelled to find out more. He wants to master his fears, but he also wants to understand himself better. He even confesses, during an especially revealing interview, that he feels like a failure. The makers of Blackout clearly prey on that fear.

It would be a waste of time to speculate about what motivates Blackout’s creators since they refuse to answer any questions until the last few minutes of the film. “The Blackout Experiments” is not about the makers of Blackout, but rather guys like Russell, the ones who still aren’t sure how Blackout works them over, or why they find it so compelling. In that sense, “The Blackout Experiments” mostly succeeds in capturing Russell and his peers’ disorientation. I’m just not sure what the value of that experience is. Imagine meeting someone while they consider their life through the lens of a major trauma. You bond over this trauma. You’ve never met this person, but they come into your life only because you want to know more about what happened to them. How does that make you feel? You will never know what this person is like outside of their post-Blackout Lives. So now you, like Fox, are a little bit complicit too. You wanted to watch Russell explain himself, and put himself through a hellish experience. You’re in this film, too.

I left “The Blackout Experiments” feeling like I saw something unique and disturbing. Fox doesn’t go far enough, preferring instead to jolt us, and then tease us with a simplistic bottom line that deserves greater scrutiny: trauma can be good for us. I wish I could recommend “The Blackout Experiments” more strongly. His interviews could have been more thoughtful, his footage more revealing and his subjects’ mindsets examined in greater detail. There’s something here, but it’s darker, and more elusive, than perhaps Fox even knows.

Simon Abrams

Simon Abrams is a native New Yorker and freelance film critic whose work has been featured in  The New York Times ,  Vanity Fair ,  The Village Voice,  and elsewhere.

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'Gyeongseong Creature' Season 2 Gets Stunning New Poster Ahead of Premiere

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With just ten days left until the premiere of Gyeongseong Creature Season 2, Netflix decided to take advantage of its fan event Geeked Week to tease a little more of what's coming to the popular K-drama series. Today, the streamer unveiled some stunning new key art that hints at the new season's biggest twist — the huge time jump that sets the story almost 100 years after the events of Season 1. The new episodes debut on September 27.

As the first trailer revealed , Chae-ok ( Han So-hee ) still has a lot to unpack as she braves through present-day Korea after surviving the horrible experiences of Gyeongseong — which was the ancient name given to Seoul in the early 20th century . Additionally, she'll have to figure out what's up with Ho-jae, a modern-day man who bears a striking resemblance to Season 1's Tae-sang ( Park Seo-jun ). Are they related? Could it be the same man she met at Gyeongseong? We'll have to wait and see.

The new look at Season 2 also underscores themes that Gyeongseong Creature will continue to cover. What does political oppression look like for Chae-ok when compared to the Gyeongseong spring she witnessed in 1945? Back in the old timeline, the experiment also served as an allegory of humankind being unable to look at each other as humans , and that also happens in 2024, albeit in different ways that aren't always easy to spot.

Can 'Gyeongseong Creature' Keep Its 92% Rotten Tomatoes Score?

Gyeongseong Creature will continue to be a missing persons series , with Chae-ok being extremely good at locating people who have disappeared — even if they were killed after disappearing. So, once again the layers will make the K-drama a must-watch title, and one that justifies its high 92% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes. Should the TV show be able to maintain its quality despite its own bold twist, fans are in for a treat once again.

Gyeongseong Creature is just one of several K-dramas that have been slowly but steadily making their way to winning the hearts and minds of people all over the world. When Season 1 premiered, it shot to the top 10 most-watched series on Netflix , and chances are that the new episodes will have the same result. Currently, K-dramas are all over the Netflix charts, with special attention to weekly titles Love Next Door and Romance In The House .

Netflix debuts Season 2 of Gyeongseong Creature on September 27. You can check out the new poster below.

Gyeongseong Creature

A riveting documentary that uncovers the legend of a mysterious creature reported in Gyeongseong during the era of Japanese rule in Korea. Combining historical records, eyewitness accounts, and expert insights, the film paints a vivid picture of the creature's alleged appearances and the societal reactions it provoked.

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