97 min | R | June 11, 2021 | Hidden Empire Film Group
Carl Black moves his family into a gated suburb and learns the new neighbor is a vampire. Mike Epps panics. Katt Williams bares his fangs and does all the work the script refuses to do.
Carl Black uproots his family and moves them into a gated suburban community. A mysterious doctor named Mamuwalde takes the house next door. People start disappearing. Carl becomes convinced his neighbor is a vampire and nobody believes him. The film borrows the bones of Fright Night and hangs a Meet the Blacks sequel on them. The horror frame exists only to set up crude bits, and the bits do most of the heavy lifting.
Mike Epps plays Carl Black as a loud coward who spends most of the film yelling at things he cannot prove. He commits to the panic but the script hands him one note to play. Katt Williams plays Dr. Mamuwalde with a velvet menace that is the only fully committed performance in the movie. He understands he is in a horror parody and pitches every line accordingly. Bresha Webb plays Allie as the exhausted voice of reason against the chaos. Lil Duval as Cronut and Andrew Bachelor as Freezee mug for the camera without building characters, while Zulay Henao as Lorena and Tyrin Turner as Rico get nothing to do.
Deon Taylor directs from a script he writes with Corey Harrell. The filmmaking is flat and functional. Taylor shoots the suburban street in bright, even daylight that drains any horror atmosphere out of the parody. The editing lets scenes run long past the joke, and the improvised riffs sprawl until the energy dies on screen. The score telegraphs every gag and every scare with no faith that the images can do the work. Nothing in the construction suggests anyone is trying to build tension or pay off the Fright Night structure.
The first Meet the Blacks ran on the same engine and at least picked a clear target. This sequel picks Fright Night and then forgets it has a horror movie to make. The jokes arrive without setups and land without payoffs. Katt Williams walks in with a real character and the film has no idea what to do with him. The result is a parody that neither scares nor amuses. It coasts on a brand name and hopes the audience does not notice there is nothing underneath.