‘Emergency’ Review: A Terrifying Joy Ride Through White Fragility [Sundance]

Carey Williams’ 2018 Sundance award-winning short, “Emergency,” opens on a simple premise: A trio of underrepresented college roommates discover a white girl unconscious on their living room floor. Afraid to call the police for fear of potential violence, they suggest options to find help without losing their lives. Following his feature debut “R#J” at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, Williams returns with a same-titled feature adaptation of his short. In this version, Williams, with screenwriter Kristen Dávila, hones the kinship shared by Kunle (Donald Elise Watkins, stirring breakout), an academically-minded college senior, bound for Princeton University, and his party focused best friend, Sean (RJ Cyler, “The Harder They Fall”). The story grows from a mere, simple premise to a character-driven narrative about these Black men navigating spaces dominated by the police and white fragility. 

Apart from the pressing themes, Williams’ “Emergency,” a hilarious tonal shifting joy ride, though not very incisive thematically, doesn’t wholly concern the nightmarish scenario it’s fashioned. Rather it’s an emotionally penetrating breakup movie.

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The opening third to “Emergency,” the strongest section, operates as a satire of Black folks in attending higher education. For instance, as the few Black people at their university, Kunle and Sean must endure a lecture led by a performative white British teacher about the n-word. The school is so white, in fact, the Black Student Union created a “hall of firsts” for the first-time accomplishments made by Black students and alumni (one of the jokes, inadvertently melds with the pandemic). Sean dreams of getting a place in that hall. He plans for him and Kunle to make their mark by becoming the first Black folks to complete the college’s legendary tour, hitting all seven frat houses in one night. 

Both Watkins as Kunle and Cyler as Sean share realistic, relatable chemistry as two young adults in an opposites-attract friendship. You can easily see how Kunle, a straight-laced kid raised by strict, professionally minded immigrant parents, would gravitate to Sean, a freewheeling soul with zero inhibitions. The discovery of an inebriated white girl, Emma (Maddie Nichols), passed out on their living room floor, however, spotlights the differences between these close friends: the idealistic Kunle wants to call the police, the practical Sean knows how easily that could go left. 

This film is about Black men, how white folks see them, and the myriad of ways Black men must take seemingly incomprehensible actions to avoid incomprehensible ends. In its scope, there are, however, casualties along the way. Their stoner Latinx roommate, Carlos (Sebastian Chacon), treated as an outsider, isn’t well-sketched. That’s partly to do with how Kunle and Sean aren’t able to see him. But it is no less unsatisfying, in a film so specific with respect to how the world observes people of color.    

Williams also doesn’t provide much depth to the women in “Emergency.” Sure, one spends much of the film inebriated. The other, her older sister (Sabrina Carpenter), who teams with a couple of friends to find Emma, jumps to conclusions partly based on the trio’s race. But what about the Black woman, Asa (Summer Madison), Sean found so attractive? The one that arrives in his neon-lit daydreams in a haze of smoke? “Emergency” gets Black men right, but doesn’t just ignore the hyper-sexualized ways the world sees Black women, it participates in the same gaze.  

Even so, as Sean, Kunle, and Carlos drive through their winding college town in a minivan, desperately trying to get Emma to the hospital, Williams stands on his firmest ground by explicating the contracts between Kunle and Sean: One all-too comfortably navigates the white gaze— putting the safety of white people, his bacterial cultures (needed for his thesis), and himself above his friends. Partly because he never expects to be treated as Black. But also because he so easily believes the performative side of white people. His friends, on the other hand, live in fear. 

These internal tonal shifts translate to a number of scenes: A visit to a house party belonging to Sean’s brother puts you on the floor in laughter. While a run-in with the cops is drenched in horror. Likewise, the camera movement, relying on verticality, and the framing, opting for unnerving close-ups, visually accentuate these extremes. And the enlivening performances by Watkins, physically actualizing how Black excellence tightly winds Kunle, and an endlessly entertaining but no less harrowing Cyler furthers those big emotional swings.    

The ending to “Emergency,” a commentary on white performative respectability politics, a form of fake allyship that leaves one slightly wanting because of the muddiness of Kunle and Sean’s travails with Emma. Her sister certainly devolves to racial profiling while searching for her. But the script conveniently labels her reactions wholly under the umbrella of bias, when the reality seems more complicated. By losing that complexity the film loses its well-earned political steam. Williams is blunt and open, which works wonders comedically, but leaves far more complex themes lacking in their simplicity.  

Instead, it’s the unbreakable friendship between Kunle and Sean, the ways their time together, good or bad in college, will mark how they see the world, and how the world sees them, forever, that makes Williams’ “Emergency” an elaborate, chaotically hilarious, intensely terrifying journey worth taking. [B]

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