A movie that has been near-universally panned by critics is currently trending on Amazon Prime Video.
2022’s Blacklight, starring Liam Neeson, has an abysmal rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but the 82 percent audience score means some people were able to find something worthwhile about it.
That “some people” is Watch With Us, and we believe that all movies, even the bad ones, have some merit.
The film stars Neeson as a shadowy government agent who uncovers a deadly conspiracy. We break down the reasons why Blacklight is worth checking out — even if it’s only for a hate-watch.
Amazon Prime Video hosts some of the best mainstream movies, like The Naked Gun, A Minecraft Movie and Knives Out. But the streamer also has plenty of hidden gems buried in its library, and sometimes they need a little extra push to get in front of the right eyes. This March, Watch With Us thinks you should […]
It’s So Bad You Might as Well See What All the Fuss Is About
Blacklight stars Neeson in the kind of role that his middle-aged celebrity persona has become known for: tough guys who are willing to risk everything to protect/save the ones they love. This was first introduced in Taken, and has gone on to evolve and shape shift across many more films such as Cold Pursuit, The Ice Road, Retribution and Honest Thief. In Blacklight, Neeson is an FBI fixer named Travis Block who becomes involved in a dangerous conspiracy amongst his own ranks. Unfortunately, this version of the Liam Neeson action hero isn’t quite up to snuff, and the film itself should be better than it is.
To get a good idea of how bad Blacklight is, look no further than the movie’s Rotten Tomatoes score, which is an impressively low 12 percent. The kicker? The critics’ consensus just reads one simple phrase: “Turn it off.” When a movie is purported to be that bad, it kind of makes you want to find out just how bad it really is, especially when the audience — as seen on the Rotten Tomatoes site — differs so starkly from the critical body (it should be noted, however, that it has a 4.9 score on IMDb). That might be what’s behind the film currently sitting in the Prime Video top 10 — some good old-fashioned morbid curiosity. And at 105 minutes, you’re not even wasting that much of your time by indulging in it.
Liam Neeson Manages to Make ‘Blacklight’ Watchable
If you love Neeson in his other action schlock fare, you’ll get your money’s worth with Blacklight, even though the character of Travis Block isn’t quite as good as Taken’s Bryan Mills. Still, it’s Neeson in his grizzled protector role, and if that’s something that you’re into, then you’ll probably come away happy. Neeson does carry a certain gravitas and intensity in these roles that can’t be matched by other actors, and even when the character is phoned in, and you can tell it would be easy for Neeson to phone it in as well, but he doesn’t. That’s a consummate showman.
Neeson is ultimately why the movie isn’t totally irredeemable, and it’s kind of cool to see Neeson still get these tough-guy roles given his advanced age. Hey, maybe the movie proves that he isn’t able to run very far without getting out of breath anymore, and for some reason, this is left in the film to make audiences think, “Is Liam Neeson actually getting a little too old for these kinds of roles?” But is that going to stop him from taking them? Well, if upcoming action thrillers like The Mongoose and Hotel Tehran are any indication, that’s an unambiguous “no.”
‘Blacklight’ Is an Action Film That Is Kind of Hilarious
Gabriella Sengos and Liam Neeson in Blacklight. Briarcliff Entertainment / Courtesy Everett Collection
Blacklight isn’t quite a “so-bad-it’s-good” movie. In fact, it’s very solidly a “so-bad-it’s-just-bad” movie, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t things about it that are deeply amusing. In particular, there’s a scene that showcases a hilariously bad on-screen graphic for the film’s in-universe fake Twitter stand-in with app functions like “reflooks” and “quote flooks.”
But there are other little flourishes: plenty of hilariously bad line reads, a dog named “Little Man,” and the movie being very obviously shot in Australia and not in Washington, D.C., where the story is set. Plus, the fact that it is such a half-hearted carbon copy of other, better Neeson action movies is laughable in and of itself. Blacklight is worth watching if you’re a die-hard Neeson fan or if you like watching inept action movies that try desperately to punch above their own weight.