First Night (Short)
“First Night” starts out with a simple premise– two roommates call the police because of a loud, possibly violent next door neighbor –that turns into a frightening, nightmare scenario of the “police state” taking over through revolution. It’s a “What if?” scenario that might seem like something out of the mind of conspiracy theorists, certainly in the way it’s presented here, but there’s a kernel of truth to the possibility, as we’ve seen further evidence of entitlement among the ranks of police officers across the world, and here in America, and a scary sense of “us vs. them” creep into the way we look at officers.
As I said before, the film, written and directed by Philippe Bourret, starts off relatively normal, as two roommates, tired of the constant noise coming from their neighbor’s apartment, decide to do something and call the police on them. Before they arrive on the scene, though, we watch as two cops talk to a friend of theirs, who was kicked off the force not long ago, over a cup of coffee. They get the call, and respond. The questions JP, who is in charge of the group, as the roommates (Alex and Vero), though, hint at something more insidious than a routine line of questioning for a domestic disturbance, and soon, the roommates are trapped by JP and his buds (Rich and Moses), and have a front row seat to what JP promises will be a revolution, leading to a police takeover.
At a time when police intimidation, corruption, and entitlement seems to be highlight a few times a week in online reporting, or even in the media, the premise of a film like “First Night” feels less like “worst case scenario,” and more like “we’re inching our way towards this each day.” While we want to believe something like this couldn’t happen in America, or anywhere else in the world (and I don’t think a total police takeover would be successful in reality), the fact is that moments like the one we see in this film, which is clearly, intelligently, laid out in an effectively creepy fashion, happen every day, making one wonder whether a police state is already upon us. Of course, the extreme case that this film presents, only implied, would make the protests and riots in Ferguson and New York in recent months look like one-on-one brawls, but when one considers the possibility, one sees that sadly, possibly, we might be on the precipice of something similar. The question is, would we be as ultimately helpless to stop it as Alex and Vero are? “First Night” doesn’t provide that answer, and if it did, I’m not we would like it if it did.
