If the UK’s entire power supply were to fail, how long do you reckon it would take for society to regress to the point that people would begin eating cold chips they had rescued from a bin? According to Blackout, a feature-length docu-drama directed by Bafta-award winning Ben Chanan, the answer is a mere two days.
This is a serious piece of work which, by its closing moments, turns from exploration of an intriguing what-if scenario to fully realised psychological horror. And yet it’s the elements of humour among the panic and the drudgery that make Blackout so engrossing. The film follows a variety of characters in the immediate aftermath of a nationwide power outage, using a combination of “found footage” - performed by a predominantly amateur cast - and stock scenes from real civil emergencies to ramp up the tension.
Its interest is in the effects of a prolonged power outage on real people
Although news reports hint at the role of a cyber attack, or terrorist activity, in bringing down the National Grid one day in November, Blackout doesn’t concern itself with that kind of detail. Its interest is in the effects of a prolonged power outage on real people, and on the country’s vital infrastructure: communications, hospitals, law and order. The film nods at, but never explains, exactly how the operators of the smartphone cameras that provide the action manage to hold on to five days’ worth of power, but everything else appears to be painstakingly researched: the title cards that appear occasionally, pointing out at what point the National Emergency Plan for Fuel kicks in, or the generators that power the country’s mobile phone base stations fail, add to the realism rather than act as distraction.
The film opens with a spooky, Cloverfield-style confession video, in which a badly-lit man with a black eye appears to be readying himself to do something terrible. “I’m filming this because I want to be fully accountable for my actions,” he says sombrely, before the opening credits roll. When he appears again it’s before events begin: as a smug, middle-class dad with an interest in survival and a shiny new fuel-based generator to demonstrate for his video blog.
When the power goes Andy is at first quietly confident, cooking sausages on a back-garden barbecue and threatening to purify the water from the radiators to drink. He seems to be better prepared than Lorrie and her young daughter Jay Jay (above right), who are heading to Sheffield where Lorrie’s mother is without water. On the other side of London, Chloe - who has escaped relatively unscathed from a blackout-related car crash - keeps vigil over her comatose brother as the hospital lights flicker, while young lads Dodge and Gibbo - apparently head-hunted by the director after they posted a film of their escape from a lift on YouTube - steal a car, steal some vodka, steal a hosepipe then use that to steal some petrol as they try to make their way home.
Like most examples of the found footage style of filmmaking, Blackout moves slowly at first - but the whole thing is put together so cleverly that each of its individual stories becomes more compelling than the Government’s response, or the inevitable shots of civil unrest. That not everyone will prosper is predictable, but there are some genuine shocks along the way.