Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Carey Williams
Starring: RJ Cyler, Donald Elise Watkins, Sebastian Chacon, Sabrina Carpenter,
Maddie Nichols, Madison Thompson, Diego Abraham
Director Carey Williams' Emergency boasts one of
the most daring setups you'll likely have encountered in quite a while.
Three college buddies find an unconscious underage girl on the living
room floor of their dorm house. Rather than immediately contacting the
appropriate authorities, they worry that they might be held responsible
for whatever might have happened to the girl before she arrived at their
home. What a bunch of narcissists, right? But wait, of the three
students in question, two are African-American and the third is Mexican,
while the girl is white. How might this scenario look to any authority
figures?
Not wanting to find out the answer to such a question, streetwise Sean
(RJ Cyler) convinces his preppy buddy Kunle (Donald Elise Watkins) and nerdy gamer Carlos (Sebastian Chacon) that this is a
problem they need to deal with themselves. They decide the best course
of action is to drive the girl, Emma (Maddie Nichols), to the
nearest emergency ward.
Of course, this proves easier said than done, as these three young men
of colour stick out like a sore thumb in their white college town.
Making it to the ER requires keeping ahead of Emma's distraught sister
(Sabrina Carpenter), evading the police and generally not drawing
the attention of any white folks who might view these three guys
dragging an unconscious white girl around with suspicion.
Williams opens his movie in familiar teen comedy territory, all upbeat
hip-hop tunes on the soundtrack. Cyler and Watkins have great chemistry
as the cynical working class Sean and the naïve middle class Kunle. Once
the elephant in the room, or rather the body on the floor, appears, the
film begins to struggle with its tone. African-Americans' fear of the
police, and of white people in general, doesn't sound like a topic that
lends itself easily to comedy, so it's no surprise that despite the best
attempts of their talented young cast, Williams and screenwriter
KD Dávila struggle to mine many laughs from this fraught
scenario. The satire simply isn't sharp enough, perhaps because this is
such a blunt issue. There's a nice moment in which our protagonists are
threatened by an angry white couple, only for the camera to pan across
and reveal said couple have a "Black Lives Matter" sign on their lawn, a
reminder that liberals love to tell us they love people of colour until
they find some in their own neighbourhood.
But such digs are few and far between in a movie that plays it far too
safe in its portrayal of white people. Our three leads keep telling us
the dangers white people pose, but the film never dares to actually show
this, constantly making excuses for its white characters as though it's
terrified of offending a white audience. There was a time in the
blaxploitation era when movies could unambiguously portray white people
as villains in black-centred movies, but American cinema seems to have
regressed in this area in the decades since the '70s. I didn't believe
half of the actions of the white people in this movie, particularly the
police, whom the film really lets off the hook. Ironically, the closest
the film gives us to an outright white villain is Emma's sister, the
very person who has a right to view our protagonists with suspicion.
After all, from her point of view her sister has been abducted by three
young men.
At the point where Emergency realises it doesn't have the
satirical chops to continue in a comic vein, it should have doubled down
on the thriller stakes. There was a great opportunity here to make
something of a response to all those '80s and '90s thrillers that saw
middle class white folks try to escape from urban ghettos and survive
the night. Sean, Kunle and Carlos face a racial and class reversal of
this scenario, but the movie never makes the audience experience the
tension that three such young men would feel in this sort of scenario.
It's riffing on Weekend at Bernie's when it should be
Judgment Night in suburbia.
Emergency is on Prime Video UK
now.
