Emergency Action Plan
2020 · 9m
Directed by Dylan Redford
Genres: documentary, essay film, satire
Tones: contemplative, darkly comic, tense
A man spiral-watches active shooter preparedness videos after his employer recommends them, obsessing over exit routes until he starts worrying his own internet search history looks like planning. A satirical personal essay about how emergency readiness drills create the thing they're trying to prevent.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
The preparedness protocol becomes the paranoia becomes the threat — the loop closes so neatly it's almost funny.
Dylan Redford's active-shooter-instructional-video-as-spiral is the rare American-essayistic register that takes paranoia seriously as form — closer to Travis Wilkerson than to a satirical sketch, which is the right ambition.
First-person essay film where research into violence begins to implicate the narrator himself — active-shooter preparedness creating the thing it's trying to prevent is a sharp self-aware thesis from Dylan Redford.