Any African American will tell you that sometimes, you just have to laugh at racism. I mean, it’s the 21st century, and nevertheless some white people still get scared out of their wits and automatically call the cops if they see brown-skinned folk doing something they consider suspicious. But those brown people can get scared too. If these past couple of years have taught us anything, it’s that even the most innocent person of color can instantly be wiped off the face of the earth over nothing more than misunderstanding.
The new movie Emergency — which has a brief run at the Belcourt this week before heading over to Amazon Prime Video — makes a farcical nightmare of the fear and panic Black and white people face whenever they’re around each other. College seniors/buddies Sean (RJ Cyler, aka Earl from Me and Earl and the Dying Girl) and Kunle (Donald Elise Watkins) plan on being the first Black students to do the “Legendary Tour,” hitting a bunch of campus parties in one night. Their plans unfortunately hit a snag when they come home and see an unwelcome visitor, a passed-out white girl (Maddie Nichols), on their living-room floor.
Along with their mixed-race roommate Carlos (Sebastian Chacon), these guys will now spend the evening trying to figure out the proper way to deal with this dilemma without cops taking them to jail or worse. While future Princeton student Kunle wants to call 911, the high, paranoid Sean would just prefer to dump her at a party and be done with it.
Here director Casey Williams and writer KD Dávila do a full-length expansion on their 2018 short of the same name, turning the absurd yet tense chamber piece into a darkly comic road-trip movie. They even throw in a bossy coed (Girl Meets World pop princess Sabrina Carpenter), who becomes concerned when her li’l sis ends up missing. The movie (which won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival) is basically a racially charged Superbad for people who’ve been listening to Kendrick Lamar nonstop — two BFFs have a crazy night that could spark the beginning of them drifting apart, plus they have a goofy-ass sidekick tagging along.
Of course, it’s all high jinks until things get serious in the third act, as Williams and Dávila pound home the message that reluctant good Samaritans can easily become casualties. In the age of Black Lives Matter, a comedy-slash-thriller about three men of color trying to do the right thing without getting killed for it seems both obvious and necessary. To some viewers, Emergency might seem implausible and ridiculous. But for people who’ve come to see the police as more of a threat than a public service, this might be the most terrifying film they’ll see all year.
