‘The Day Shall Come’ Uses Satire to Explore When the State Invents Its Own Terrorists

Alci Rengifo

“The Day Shall Come” almost defies easy categorization. It is a farcical comedy with a sharp political mind, full of both slapstick and dashes of biting satire. Director Chris Morris, after a nearly 10-year hiatus from making features, returns to comment on multiple issues ranging from terrorism to race relations, gentrification to abuses by the state. His main character seems like a real oddball but only at first, because the real freaks turn out to be the people wearing badges.

Set in Miami, our lead character is Moses Al Shabaz (Marchánt Davis), who is a self-styled mystical revolutionary, leading a band of other African Americans from a community undergoing gentrification. His philosophy is based on a mixture of various ideologies and he’s convinced God and Satan emit messages to him via a duck. He has a wife, Venus (Danielle Brooks) and they are desperate for cash, not just for the revolution but for paying the rent. In his flowing cape, 19th century-style hat, with a habit to occasionally ride a horse, Moses becomes the perfect target for the FBI, in particular agent Kendra Glack (Anna Kendrick). Part of a unit desperate to nab potential terrorists, Kendrick decides to use an infamous bureau trick, nabbing Moses by leading him into a contrived plot involving Arab informants posing as Al Qaeda-like terrorists. But when Moses doesn’t go for the bait and even tries to turn the supposed terror plot around without meaning to actually do any harm, Glack freaks out and finds new, sometimes absurd ways to try and still turn Moses into a terrorist to handcuff.

This is the kind of movie with a character who is a bit nuts but is the heart of it all. Moses is likeable because he’s a sort of holy fool, announcing plans to overthrow the “accidental dominance of the white race” and getting his tiny band of rebels to chant “Europeans you will pay.” What Morris does so well is use such a character to demonstrate the abuses of government in a post-9/11 world. Since Moses is odd, admitting he wants to buy AK-47s to use them to build a symbolic fence, preaching a hazy idea of a coming race war (one follower wants to plant nail bombs at Whole Foods), he becomes an easy mark for an FBI seeking to score points. The screenplay by Jesse Armstrong sometimes dismisses subtly, cheerfully having Glack and fellow, whining agent Andy (Denis O’Hare) boasting about spinning new Al Qaeda-style plots to then make arrests. Stereotypes are tossed around to hilarious, satirical effect, like Arab FBI informants faking “terrorist” language by issuing greetings to Moses like “9/11!” One of Moses’s comrades can only reply with “9/12.” But by the end the message of the film becomes more poignant, as Moses is clearly the clueless victim of the government molding him into a convenient suspect. Armstrong also wrote Morris’s previous 2010 film “Four Lions,” also about bungling, would-be militants. 

Moses stays in the memory because of the wonderful performance by Marchánt Davis, who makes his feature film debut with “The Day Shall Come.” He plays Moses with the straight-faced, sincere attitude of a true believer. He’s a loser Che Guevara, endearing in his sincerity but doomed. The material has a more striking resonance considering it is inspired by true stories involving “suspects” essentially corralled by the FBI into bogus plots. 

Davis spoke with Entertainment Voice on the experience of making a film that bridges comedy and fierce commentary.

“I didn’t have the script before I got the job,” revealed Davis. “It was kind of fun and nearer to how the process was, you just had to jump in. There wasn’t much time to think and question yourself. As an actor it was a beautiful experience. But when I first got the script, it was sometime between when I first met the director and when we first started filming. A week after I got the job he wanted to sit down and have lunch and talk. I’ll never forget he sat down and said, ‘I have this idea, Moses rides in on a horse!’ And I was like, thankfully for you I went to a white people’s summer camp.” A veteran of short films, this was Davis’s dive into a feature project. “I graduated from NYU in acting in 2016, so this was my first leading role out of school. Reading the script I felt like a kid on Christmas, just thinking ‘oh my god this is epic!’ It was crazy, and then it becomes so poignant. This director is a true provocateur.” 

“I don’t think I realized it was comedy until I saw it,” said Davis when discussing the film’s wider themes. Not only does Moses become entangled in an invented terrorist plot spun by the FBI, but he and Venus face eviction notices, there’s little concrete work available for the working class and even the FBI agents make racist jokes. Moses’s mystical ideology, which references everyone from Marcus Garvey to Jesus, symbolizes the need to believe in something greater amid harsh times. “Being black in America some of the material here didn’t land to me as jokes. I tried to approach the material is truthfully as possible.” Davis commented on how Morris was inspired by the true case of a group of construction workers who “planned a ground war against the U.S., they claimed to an informant who offered them money. Their plan was to ride into Chicago on horseback, knock over the Sears Tower and cause a tidal wave that would swamp the city. But they had no money, no guns or horses. The crazy thing is that it went to trial and these men were found guilty as terrorists. The U.S. Attorney General claimed it was the biggest terror plot since 9/11. That was back in 2008, 2009 I believe.” 

“With a group that’s so symbiotic and together making a movie is such a great experience,” said Davis about working with Morris and his cast mates. “But in terms of filmmaking, Chris is very playful. It was a living experience. The piece itself felt very alive.”

For Davis “The Day Shall Come” resonates in an era of fake news and heated debates about truth. “I hope they understand how paranoia corrupts our thinking, that it might be easier for us to invent our own terrorists than to find a real one, that black bodies might not be as harmful as they think they are. At his core Moses is a family man, he wants to save his family from being evicted, yeah he has some ideas that are out there to the general public, but does that mean he should be jailed for the rest of his life?” 

“The Day Shall Come” opens Sept. 27 in select theaters.