Emergency was reviewed out of the SXSW Film Festival.
For decades, the prototypical college comedy revolved around two staples: raunchy sex humor and intoxication jokes. From Animal House to Road Trip — also including high school graduation titles like American Pie — collegiate comedies tended to be lighter, less worried about responsible depictions and written from a white male perspective. That’s why Carey Williams’ Emergency hits so differently in comparison. We’re nowhere near seeing equal representation in genres like comedy and horror, where token stereotypes run most rampant, but Emergency bucks those tropes by using perspective storytelling that’s hilarious and impactful.
Through undergraduate students Kunle (Donald Elise Watkins) and Sean (RJ Cyler), screenwriter KD Davila explores the Black experience on college campuses and within America’s backyard. Kunle is a son of physicians pursuing his doctoral education, while Sean wastes his academic potential on acid, booze, and weed binges. They plan to be the first Black classmates to complete the “Legendary Tour” — an epic seven-party crawl — but that doesn’t happen. Instead, they return home to find out their gamer roommate Carlos (Sebastian Chacon) has left the door unlocked, and now an intoxicated white woman is passed out on their living room floor.
Williams and Davila don’t waste time confronting their audience with facts and fears that lead to an outrageous chain of events. Emergency is a comedy, but that doesn’t mean it can’t also be socially conscious and commentative. There’s no satire here — Sean’s immediate choice to handle things discreetly versus dialing 9-1-1 is a direct reaction to publicized police shootings of innocent Black Americans. All the actors dance this complex conversational choreography throughout Emergency that ensures audiences have fun but can still sense the danger at hand. Three minorities will face blame for the unconscious white woman in their care, despite their honorable desires to seek help.
When Emergency is funniest, it’s because Donald Elise Watkins and RJ Cyler’s chemistry is tighter than a 12-step secret handshake. Cyler’s ability to distill the most complicated racial tensions to a few blunt words is a continual standout, not to discredit all the regular awkwardness of college romances or drunken banter. Sebastian Chacon’s Carlos fills the odd-man-out role as a reclusive video game addict who sports a fanny pack filled with granola bars, which checks another college movie “nerd” box — but even his inclusion goes further than recycled tropes. Plans go awry, and the boys find themselves in a bonkers predicament because they’re so untrusting of how actual professionals would behave, which is a situation we’re still allowed to have fun with when the scene allows.
The reality of Emergency is much bleaker, given how distracted adolescents endanger party-crasher Emma (Maddie Nichols) even further — preventable if Sean, and by extension the trio, didn’t rightfully distrust authority. It might be easy for some to write off Kunle, Sean, and Carlos as reckless college students, especially when Emma sips from the wrong sports drink bottle. The commentary that’s woven into Emergency wants you to understand that everything that happens after Sean, Kunle, and Carlos decide to act independently is avoidable. That doesn’t negate their reasoning, nor does it lessen the sting of pivotal moments that recall images from works like Blindspotting or Dear White People. Trauma and injustice peer through marijuana hazes that drive Sean and Kunle to bicker about their upbringings and experiences — Kunle is ridiculed by Sean for not being Black enough — which all boils down to their inability to act as free citizens without concern.
Williams deserves recognition for not only spinning so many plates but ensuring that each one gets attention. In the same scene where Sabrina Carpenter’s Maddie, the irresponsible big sister to Emma, tracks down Sean’s van and clumsily sprays herself with mace, she’s called out point-blank for continuing to accuse Sean, Kunle, and Carlos of wrongdoing despite their clear insistence of innocence. Emergency finds ways to laugh at ugliness while still conveying how generational racism is very real or turns situational comedy into a medium for change. Perhaps that only makes its messages more impactful — when Williams shifts tone and wants to make a painful point, the laughter stops. We take notice. Life is comedy, but life is also tragedy. Seeing both levels a necessary sternness beyond the real-world experiences that inspire what transpires.
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