Tyler (Jason Mitchell) is invited by his friend Johnny (Christopher Abbott) to spend the weekend with him and his friends at a cabin in the Catskill Mountains. Their plan is to celebrate the birthday of their pal Pete (Caleb Landry Jones) and have a good, alcohol-soaked time. But soon, Tyler starts to feel uneasy with the festivities when he realises that he is the only African American at the party and the other guests start making comments and jokes that are racists. Vanity Fair named Tyrel “2018’s Answer to Get Out” for his discomforting exploration of interracial relationships in America, not unlike in Jordan Peele’s horror flick Get Out. Chilean filmmaker Sebastián Silva (Nasty Baby, Crystal Fairy and the Magical Cactus) manages to make the viewers experience the unease of its main protagonist and proves that sadly, for all its claim to be progressive, modern, and anti-Trump, white America still has a long way to go in terms of equality.
 
Tyrel is a tense and unpredictable feature where the main character’s anguish is slowly increasing with every cringe-worthy moment he spends in the cabin with Johnny’s white friends. The audience is left with the only hope that at some point, Tyler answers back to these boorish thirty-something bros. A regular of Silva’s filmography, Michael Cera makes an apparition mid-way through the film as one of the wildest and most contradictory characters as usual. The film also features stellar performances from Mitchell (Straight Outta Compton), Abbott (Jack White; Girls), Landry Jones (Get Out; Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri) and the recently departed Reg E. Cathey (Nasty Baby, Alex of Venice).
 
Silva built an effortlessly compelling film that is sure to lead to some serious post-screening discussion as the situations depicted in the movie, for all their cringe-worthiness, are all-too-well-known to the viewers. A dark mumblecore, Tyrel is one of the most essential and disquieting films of this year’s edition of Americana.
 

2018: Sundance Film Festival