The IMDb plot resumé for American Refugee says it’s a film about race in America. There is a black family and a white family in it, and they come into conflict, that’s true. Race, however, is not mentioned once. In fact class and cultural politics, plus masculinity – toxic and otherwise – seem to be more of a concern for its writers, Allison and Nicolas Buckmelter. Maybe, being a white couple, the Buckmelters thought it best to stay away from overt references to race. Maybe, this being America in the 21st century, it doesn’t even need to be said.
Here’s the situation. Things are bad out there in the USA. The stock market is in meltdown. There is civil unrest. Martial law has been declared. But out in the boonies, where black family the Taylors live, things carry on much as normal. Greg (Derek Luke) and Helen (Erika Alexander) still have groceries to buy, a slightly strained relationships to negotiate, the kids to deal with, and so on. Life goes on, with adjustments, but it goes on.
The same cannot be said for the white family next door. On a plot with an electric fence around it, they are already living underground in a bunker, fully prepped for the apocalypse and defending their borders with guns. What, the Buckmelters wonder, would happen if you threw these two families together, the libtards and the crackers? And so that’s what they engineer, propelling the Taylors into the bunker of Winter (Sam Trammell) and his brood, using the difficult pregnancy of Winter’s woman, Amber (Jessi Case), and the obstetrics qualifications of Helen as a connector.
Race, as said, does not seem uppermost in the minds of the writers, nor of director Ali LeRoi. Nor of the actors, Alexander, Luke, Zamani Wilder (as their daughter Zoe). Or Trammell, Case or Vincent Mattis (as broody teenage son, Matti). Instead there’s a negotiation of right-wing positions, on guns, for instance (Winter likes them, Greg doesn’t), on a man’s role in the family (Winter the head honcho, Greg deferring often to his wife). Winter is not quite the right-wing straw man you might expect. He is self-educated, thoughtful, widely read – Greg is surprised when Winter quotes black thinkers back at him – and so not the swivel-eyed nut he’s initially painted. How long will that hold though, how long will it hold?
There is a lot going on in this movie. As well as civil breakdown, marital shakiness and white supremacy burbling along (in shadowplay), there is male overreach and the role of women in society, plus the whole preppers movement to engage with and that’s without the dangerous pregnancy to take into account. And when the Taylors’ teenage daughter Zoe and Winter’s teenage son Matty start to sniff around each other, a love across the divide plot starts to assert itself too. On top of all that, it turns out that the obsessively orderly Winter once served in Afghanistan, so maybe there’s a touch of PTSD to be dealt with too.
Most of these lines of enquiry are embarked on and then dropped, some of them remarkably hastily, as if the Buckmelters are flagging up ideas to show they realise they are there rather than as a prelude to exploring them.
It makes for a scrappy dramatic experience so full of issues (explored and otherwise) that the actors barely get room to breathe. They’re more than good but this is a writers’ movie, not an actors’ or director’s one, fascinating because of its veiled political position. Conservative? Yes, but in a strangely inclusive way. It’s the Buckmelters’ first produced screenplay and as I write they’re working on Welcome to the World, which seems to be about giving birth and motherhood. Nothing political to see there, surely?
American Refugee – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2025
