REVIEW: Emergency [2022]

Rating: R | Runtime: 105 minutes
Release Date: May 20th, 2022 (USA)
Studio: Amazon Studios
Director(s): Carey Williams
Writer(s): K.D. Dávila

There’s an unconscious white girl in our living room.

After four years living together and becoming best friends in college, this is the last chance Kunle (Donald Elise Watkins) and Sean (RJ Cyler) have to hit the frat house graduation party scene. So, to mark the occasion, Sean has procured passes to all seven of the major events in order for them to become the first two Black men to ever complete the so-called “Legendary Tour.” Unfortunately, before they can hit the pregame and get their night started, they notice the door to their house is open. Assuming their third roommate Carlos (Sebastian Chacon) subjected them to a robbery, they’re unprepared to find an addition instead: an unconscious Emma (Maddie Nichols) on the floor.

Carey Williams’ Emergency eases us into the underlying themes on race with a comedic prologue wherein Kunle and Sean’s white “Blasphemy and Taboo” professor decides to casually say the n-word before singling them out as the only Black students in the class to tell everyone how they feel. While Kunle attempts to find an appropriate excuse, Sean is having none of it. We laugh at the scenario and juxtaposition as Williams and screenwriter K.D. Dávila hope we will, right up until Sean asks whether Kunle has ever been called that word with intent. After thinking about it, he realizes the answer is “No.” That’s all Sean needs to drop the subject. His BFF might be Black and able to intellectually understand its weight, but he’s never had the experience to truly understand.

I honestly didn’t catch this distinction at the time because it’s played off like another joke with a quick, knowing cut. I should have known, though, considering Dávila is also the Oscar-nominated writer/director of the short film Please Hold. The way she weaves humor and drama together to ensure her audience absorbs the message without feeling preached to is impressive. A lot of it comes from visual gags that Williams sprinkles throughout (I love the BLM sign on the white Neighborhood Watch couple’s yard as they film what they presume is a drug deal simply because their subjects are Black), but most of the success lies in just how deftly the filmmakers handle the inevitable shift towards real life and death stakes.

Because Emergency could be dismissed as a lark for a majority of its runtime if you’re not paying close enough attention. When the bottom drops out, though, it hits hard. We’re talking about two Black men and their Latino friend figuring out what to do with the incapacitated white stranger in their house. Call the police and hope they don’t arrive with guns drawn? Or drive to the hospital and hope they don’t get pulled over to … drawn guns? Dávila and Williams mine the complexity of this conundrum with entertainment and authenticity—pitting Kunle’s trust in the system as the happy son of doctors against Sean’s distrust after growing up in a much different world. It leads to an emotional catharsis bolstered by an epilogue as empowering (ignoring white guilt) as it is tragic (PTSD) since that aforementioned understanding can never be put back into the bottle.