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This weekend, Saturday Night Live‘s perfume commercial parody about Ivanka Trump thrust the word “complicit” into the forefront of our national consciousness; by the start of the workweek, Merriam-Webster reported that it was still one of the dictionary site’s most-searched terms. As such, the new film Burning Sands is a bewildering testament to how society’s most respected men (among them academics, police officers, and doctors) can rationalize and even promote the brutality of underground college fraternity hazing.
Trevor Jackson (American Crime) stars as Zurich Condell, a soft-spoken, smarter-than-he-seems and occasionally sly pre-med student at (fictional, though likely President Trump–approved) Frederick Douglass University, a historically black college. To the elected brethren at (fictional) Lambda Lambda Phi, however, he’s simply pledge “Number 4.” Despite an initiation process that involves being shoved into scalding hot showers, watching men be branded on the chest, and sustaining a tennis ball ambush while taking a blindfolded swim, Zurich says he wants in. Admittedly, he sounds more programmed than self-possessed; perhaps he’s driven to impress Dean Richardson (The Practice‘s Steve Harris) or vindicate his family name (years before, his father “dropped line” after attempting to join the fraternity). We follow Zurich through fives days of Hell Week—culminating in Hell Night—as he and his fellow pledges flake on their previous priorities to make beer and fast food runs for their Big Brothers (including one of Moonlight‘s three Chirons, Trevante Rhodes), counting down their final humiliations as GDIs (non-Greek “God Damn Individuals”).
As The Daily Beast points out, Burning Sands is “a story about African-American men doing analogous, terrible things to other African-American men,” a narrative reinforced when African American Studies Professor Hughes (Alfre Woodard of 12 Years a Slave) has her students read a historically dubious letter from 18th century slave owner William Lynch, where he instructs his peers to take charge by fostering plantation worker infighting. Co-writer Gerard McMurray—who pledged a fraternity at Howard University and produced Fruitvale Station, a film you can’t help recalling when the pledges and Brothers raise their hands in fear when approached by white cops—makes his feature directorial debut here, a project he told The Grio was partly a response to the 2011 hazing death of Florida A&M University drum major Robert Champion (15 of his Champion’s former bandmates faced criminal charges).
The 96-minute film, which premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, suffers from heavy-handedness on a few fronts, from voiceovers (courtesy of Douglass quotes) to exposition (“Do you remember how we met last semester?,” “Make me proud that I nominated you for my fraternity”). It’s also tough to get invested in several characters when they go unnamed for most of the proceedings. Still, you ache as Zurich undergoes emotional U-turns in the hours before Hell Night, debating whether to expose Lambda Lambda Phi’s tactics or summon his leadership potential to “cross the burning sands” into Greek life (although Professor Hughes would argue that leading by example could include quitting and tending to his broken rib). The impending tragedy makes you question not only traditionalism, but also how much we’d benefit from a spinoff about Toya (Nafessa Williams), the confident, sex-positive, Whataburger cashier who manages to turn a scene with a terrifying set-up—the pledges are ordered to sleep with a stranger, one by one—into a playful, sympathetic, and respectful encounter.
