A crime committed in the home of a regular black American family results in paranoia on all sides in this 81-minute film from Nnamdi Asomugha
Here is a compact drama that twists itself like a tourniquet over 81 minutes, as a bad situation turns into a catastrophe for an ordinary American family.
Late one night in an unnamed city, construction worker Chris (Nnamdi Asomugha, also the film’s director and co-writer) finishes a DIY project in his own home and sinks a beer or two. He takes a couple of pills before checking on his two young daughters Kendra (Amari Alexis Price) and Ryley (Aiden Gabrielle Price), who have been sneakily pretending to be asleep. Then he gets into bed with wife Alex (Aja Naomi King) for a chat and a soon-abandoned attempt to have exhausted marital sex while their infant baby sleeps next door.
All that quotidian domestic scene-setting is important because it establishes how likeable and unexceptional this Black American family are – before their lives are irrevocably changed. Because after Chris nearly falls asleep, a sound downstairs rouses him and soon a crime will be committed that compels the whole family to switch into a state of understandable paranoia when the police arrive and find a middle-aged white woman bleeding and unconscious on the kitchen floor.
