A Black man in America is a dangerous thing. A Black man in the suburbs is simply alien. This can be one of the takeaways from Delmar Washington’s feature debut, No Running, which premiered at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival in the Online Premieres: Narrative category as part of the Juneteenth programming.
SYNOPSIS: When high school student Jaylen Brown finds himself under suspicion after his classmate’s mysterious disappearance, prejudice quickly begins to bubble up to the surface of his small town. Working quickly to clear his own name, he begins to unravel a massive web of secrets that all point to otherworldly forces at play. In his debut feature, director Delmar Washington takes the sci-fi trappings of a B-movie and slyly intertwines them with themes of racial injustice and social realism to create a tense UFO abduction thriller for 21st century America.
When reading the description of Washington’s sci-fi thriller, I was excited to dive into the film. It promised to provide everything expected from a good suspense film: a small town, a history of mysterious events and some – as the logline describes – “otherworldly forces.” And to put the cinematic cherry on top, a Black boy is the protagonist (in a genre we’re just now getting respect in).
Skylan Brooks (The Darkest Minds, Empire, Archenemy) portrays Jaylen, a teenage transplant that’s trying to escape his bad boy past with a part-time job and a cute girlfriend. Cast along with heavy hitters like Rutina Wesley (Ramila, Jaylen’s mom), Taryn Manning (Aunt Suzy), Shane West (Sheriff O’Hare), and Bill Engvall (Timmy), Brooks holds his own for the entirety of the movie. Jaylen’s sister Simone, played by actress Diamond White, proved to be my favorite character in the movie, despite having only a few moments on screen. She served as a tether to reality amongst Jaylen’s extraterrestrial sightings and unwarranted alienation at school and around town.
Being written and directed by Black men (Tucker Morgan and Delmar Washington), I knew No Running had to be derived from a bit more than a boy trying to prove that aliens abducted his girlfriend. The film definitely displayed the pressures a Black teen receives from every direction in life. First, we see Jaylen dealing with a tarnished record due to the violence he was forced to enact on his step-father for physically abusing his mother. And then we see Jaylen as the only Black student in an all white school that clearly holds him up to all the negative stereotypes that America has pinned against Black boys and men. The film exposes the element of a Black boy being accused of a crime and the reality that there is no such thing as innocence. This in particular is made painfully clear when Sheriff O’Hare’s father (played by Michael Shamus Wiles) says, “I don’t care if that Black boy is innocent or guilty.” A stance law enforcement often takes with Black boys and men who go through the system.
No Running is yet another testament to the realities of being Black in America and how it can be a redundant sentence of isolation and accusation. It’s a sci-fi thriller that draws parallels between systemic inequality and mysteries of the unknown; and as the saying goes — art imitates life.
DIRECTOR: Delmar Washington
SCREENWRITER: Tucker Morgan
PRODUCER: Eric Fleischman, Maurice Fadida
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Juan Sebastian Baron
EDITOR: Adam Tyree
WITH: Skylan Brooks, Taryn Manning, Shane West, Diamond White, Rutina Wesley, Bill Engvall
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