That notion has already been fodder or comedic efforts such as the “Scary Movie” franchise, and it helped fuel the suspense (before being subverted entirely) in Jordan Peele’s “Get Out.” The inherent risk that looms over Black characters in the horror genre is the driving force behind “The Blackening,” as captured in one early line, delivered by co-writer Dewayne Perkins, who also stars in the film: “Really, b—-?,” he says to Lisa (Antoinette Robertson). “A cabin in the woods?”

The movie is based on a 2018 sketch that Perkins conceived of as part of the Chicago-based comedy troupe 3Peat. In “3Peat Presents: The Blackening,” a group of friends is forced to decide who among them is the Blackest after an on-the-loose killer is thrown off by the fact that they’re all Black. (“The Blackening” premieres Friday with an apt tagline: “We can’t all die first.”)

The friends throw out desperate claims as they try to avoid a horrific fate: One woman cops to daily viewings of “Gilmore Girls” — a beloved series that featured so few Black people that someone devoted a Tumblr to identifying them. Another member of the group admits that he prefers light-skinned Aunt Viv on “The Fresh Prince.” A rash of Black-card-endangering confessions follows.

After the sketch went viral, Tracy Oliver (“Girls Trip”) approached Perkins about turning the sketch into a feature film. The two wrote the screenplay, and Tim Story — the veteran director behind “Barbershop” and the Ride Along franchise — helmed the horror-comedy.

“The Blackening” is the latest in a string of Black horror films to follow Peele’s Oscar-nominated directorial debut, which upped the ante when it came to discourse about horror and race. Few films, save perhaps for Peele’s own follow-ups (“Us,” in 2019, and last year’s “Nope”), have come close to the social commentary that made “Get Out” a cultural phenomenon. “The Blackening” also contains elements of social commentary and satire — but mostly it’s just really funny.

Writing the jokes came naturally because Oliver and Perkins stayed true to what made them laugh. “We were just trying to make a movie that was fun and made us and our peers have a good time,” Perkins said in a phone interview, noting that this was the essence of the original sketch. “It was very easy to continue that premise because that was basically the only thing that we had at the beginning, so that was kind of our guiding light.”

One welcome challenge for the co-writers was fleshing out the mostly nameless characters from the sketch. Robertson’s Lisa is an attorney whose weekend with her college friends coincides with a surreptitious reunion with her former boyfriend Nnamdi (Sinqua Walls) — to the particular chagrin of her BFF Dewayne (Perkins).

Allison (“Empire’s” Grace Byers) is the group’s requisite biracial person and, as such, subject to taunts about how she resembles the giant zebra painting that greets the group when they enter the cabin. Jermaine Fowler (“Coming 2 America”) is the resident nerd with a secret or two. Melvin Gregg (“High Flying Bird”), comedian X Mayo (“The Farewell”) and Yvonne Orji (of “Insecure” fame) round out the cast — a decidedly millennial band of characters.

“We recognized that each character kind of represented their own archetype within Blackness, and we really wanted to give space to each of their journeys,” Perkins said. Though audience members will quickly think they have each character pegged, Perkins said, “It was our job to continuously subvert the expectation so that we can then force the audience to expand the way that they think about these particular people.”

The film honors its source material by making room for improvisation among the cast. Walls said in a recent Zoom interview that the director was very open to letting the actors “play organically.” Perkins also lent “a lot of creative license” to his co-stars, who — filming during the pandemic — were collectively isolated in a way that evoked their characters’ situation or, as Walls put it, “naturally brought a community together.”

One scene that was particularly ripe for improvisation is built around a game called The Blackening that the friends find while warily exploring the cabin. In a recent interview in Washington, Robertson said each member of the cast “thought about the ways in which people teased us about our Blackness growing up.”

Ultimately, the scene captures just how diverse the Black diaspora can be. “When you see everyone throwing out different suggestions and having different ideas, you realize we have different ethnic backgrounds. We grew up in different environments. We have different thought processes,” Robertson said. “It was just nice that we can show the many facets of Blackness without it having to be stereotypical, even though there are certain instances where we lean into stereotypes.”

One of Perkins’s favorite jokes from the movie is during that scene. A game question asks, “What does the NAACP stand for?” The first answer given? “Negroes at Applebee’s Cooking Pasta.”

“I just giggle every time,” said Perkins. “It’s very silly. I just really enjoy a silly joke, and every time I watch it, that always gets a response.”

There are some jokes — including a spicy one at the end — that might make gleeful moviegoers wonder how the pair got them past studio execs. “Tracy and I have experienced different ways in which the system of Hollywood can kind of water down your art,” Perkins said. We thought, “Okay, at some point, somebody is going to be like, ‘This is a little too Black,’ and then it just never happened,” Perkins said.

“We were very intentional with the choices that we were making … why we’re not explaining things,” added Perkins. “Thank the Lord we had a team that understood our point of view and how we wanted to display it authentically.”

That’s its own kind of triumph. Perkins said he hopes the film’s journey to the big screen “inspires people to realize the power of creating your own stuff. You just never know what it could stumble into — I didn’t know writing a sketch one day would eventually make me a screenwriter and movie star.”

In the lead-up to the film’s release, the cast has been asked whether it’s likely to appeal to a broader audience — a question that is rarely asked when the cast is primarily White. Robertson says the film “can be universally enjoyed” especially “when you take into consideration that Black culture has a tendency to influence every single avenue in entertainment.”

“I appreciate it not being watered down for the audience. This is a very fun, light comedy, but we start having conversations about race,” Robertson said, noting that for Black people “that comes into play in every aspect of our lives.”

The fact that “The Blackening” premieres ahead of Juneteenth, which marks the day in 1865 that enslaved people in Texas and other areas that remained under Confederate control learned that they were free — roughly 2½ years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation — is icing on the red velvet cake. Observed on June 19, Juneteenth has long been celebrated in Texas and other Southern states, but it didn’t become a national holiday until President Biden signed it into law in 2021.

Walls, a Louisiana native, has celebrated the holiday with his family for years and said he’s “grateful that it’s a national holiday now and something that’s getting even greater exposure” — including at the cinema. “I’m hoping that this is the catalyst to so many more opening weekends on the Juneteenth holiday,” he said. “I’m glad that we’re part of that genesis. I hope that it continues to progress with so many other great films and tentpole movies, just like July Fourth has become a weekend that you must get for the studios.”

The cast has been involved in several screenings including, most recently, a festive showing at the Blackest venue around: Harlem’s Apollo Theater. While laughter has drowned out some of the film’s funniest riffs, the screenings have inspired discourse around “The Blackening” and the themes it weaves together.

The tagline “We can’t all die first” is literal, but “it also speaks to the resilience of Blackness,” Perkins said. “Being forced to be resilient and having that resilience be the reason we are good at surviving — to see that that’s coming through and people are taking that away — that is something I’m very happy about.”