Spook — a harrowing film written and performed by an ex-cop and based on the acclaimed Capital Fringe stage production — premiered Friday, December 17, 2021, on the free online streaming platform Tubi.
Starring Cannes World Film Fest “Best Actor” and Playwright Meshaun Labrone, and produced by DC-based Flying Scoop, Spook viscerally explores American race relations, policing, and the criminal justice system 一 while being Black and wearing Blue.
Based on the one-man play by Meshaun Labrone that captured critical attention in 2018 at the Capital Fringe Festival in Washington, DC, the film stars Labrone as a condemned cop whose last words before being executed for the murders of his fellow police officers amount to a treatise on institutionalized racism in America and the emotional toll of Black cops policing Black people.
Labrone, himself a former DC police officer who spent 13 years in corrections/law enforcement and federal security, earned the Best Actor award for Spook at the 2021 Cannes World Film Fest. His explosive fictional story told entirely from a death chamber, about a cop gone wrong who murders other cops gone wrong, is produced by Flying Scoop 一 a rising indie film production company specializing in premium gritty biopic stories.
Hauntingly complex and at times skillfully uncomfortable, Spook is the final public statement by Daryl “Spook” Spokane, a police officer on death row for killing five fellow cops. Speaking an hour before his execution, Spokane recalls and portrays the acquaintances and colleagues who set him on the path toward his macabre act: the adolescent dog-poisoner, the surly church member, the Field Training Officer shot in his squad car, and the “blue domestic terrorist in Blackface” who watched a teenage sexual assault victim get taken advantage of. Throughout the film, photos and video (crime scene shots, viral cell phone video, riotous news clips, and archival photos) flash across the screen.
Psychologically immersive, with a single voice that is raging and brooding, the 60-minute film probes deep into an open wound of some of America’s most live-wire issues that are as relevant today as ever.
SEE ALSO:
Haunting last words from a Black cop on death row in Meshaun Labrone’s ‘Spook’ (film review by Jordan Ealey)
Capital Fringe Review: ‘Spook’ (theater review by John Stoltenberg)
Meshaun Labrone’s two Capital Fringe hits to be filmed for streaming
Spook trailer:
CREDITS: Spook is produced by Flying Scoop Productions. Mark Finkelpearl is Executive Producer. Nathaniel Stark is Executive Producer and Director. Labrone is actor, writer, and director. Original music is by Devin Spear.
