The Day Shall Come review: A strangely muted return from Chris Morris

Though it’s silly and as angry with the world as you’d expect, it never quite digs its claws into the behind-the-scenes machinations of the FBI

Dir: Chris Morris. Starring: Marchant Davis, Anna Kendrick, Danielle Brooks and Denis O’Hare. 15 cert, 88 mins

Chris Morris has made a career in finding the absurdity in the things we’re reluctant to talk about. Who could ever forget Brass Eye’s notorious “Paedogeddon” special? Its ruthless lampooning of the UK media’s moral panic over paedophilia saw him, in return, get labelled the “most hated man in Britain”. Since the release of his debut film, Four Lions, back in 2009, Morris has been relatively quiet, outside of directing a handful of episodes of US comedy Veep. It’s strange, then, to see him return with a film as muted as The Day Shall Come. Though it’s silly and as angry with the world as you’d expect, it never quite digs its claws in.

First off, the film’s protagonist is much less conflicted than the jihadis of Four Lions. Moses Al Shabaz (Marchant Davis), a black preacher leading the Star of Six commune, is driven by pure delusion. Although his commitment to overthrow the “accidental dominance of the white man” sounds like a straightforward case of historical justice, his methods are more unusual. Having rejected guns, since they’re what “white men gave us to destroy each other”, he hopes that it’s the CIA’s secret cabal of dinosaurs that will rise up and help them out. At least, that’s what God told him, talking through a duck.

Moses lives in Miami, his home set against a skyline littered with cranes – the signals of encroaching gentrification. But Morris, who co-wrote the script with Succession’s Jesse Armstrong, doesn’t seem particularly interested in any truth buried within Moses’s campaign. His focus is instead on the FBI who, in turn, are focused on Moses and the Star of Six. Kendra Glack (Anna Kendrick), a young operative looking to impress, is trying to convince her colleagues that he’s the ideal target for the department’s favourite form of dirty-dealing: deliberately coercing persons of interest into breaking the law so that they can arrest them, charge them as domestic terrorists, and tick another box.

The dialogue in these scenes would certainly feel at home in an episode of Veep or In the Loop, though the jokes are never quite as cutting or as memorable, despite the ferocity with which Denis O’Hare, playing Glack’s boss, delivers them. There is, at least, a streak of genuine anger to the film when it comes to the way black individuals are treated as disposable assets. It helps that Davis turns in such a strong performance, finding a sweetness to Moses’s desperation to keep his minuscule community from falling apart. These people are his family, as much as they are his followers.

But the film barely scratches the surface of the deep ineptitude and cruelty that goes on behind closed doors at the FBI. Maybe it was a deliberate choice to offer something a little more palatable to audiences, but it’s still surprising considering the amount of research he put into this project – the film opens with the declaration that it’s “based on a hundred true stories”. The Day Shall Come may draw from reality, but it fails to reflect it back to us with enough force to make us stop in our tracks.

The Day Shall Come is released in UK cinemas on 11 October