“The subject of alienation has been in all my work,” writer/director Sebastián Silva explained in the Q&A following the Sundance premiere of his latest feature “Tyrel,” and true to his word, the picture is about alienation. Trouble is, it doesn’t really have anything to say about it. A strange, shambling movie set during the inauguration weekend of 2017, it concerns Tyler (Jason Mitchell) and his buddy Johnny (Christopher Abbot) trekking up to the Catskills for the weekend to celebrate the birthday of one of Johnny’s buddies; as Tyler meets his partying companions, Silva’s camera catches the realization as it registers, ever so slightly on his face: there aren’t any other black people here. (To make matters worse, throughout the weekend, more white people keep showing up).
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It’s not just a matter of color; the general note is one of social discomfort, of Tyler simply feeling like he doesn’t fit in. “Tyrel” (the slightly discombobulated title is never explained) evocatively captures the feeling of being on the outside of inside jokes, catching our protagonist grinning along as they play peculiar games he’s never heard of or sing R.E.M. songs he doesn’t know. “It’s all good,” he insists; he doesn’t want to make a big deal. But after a while, Johnny’s little jabs at the guy he brought star to take on an edge. How much of it is typical young male ball-busting, and how much is… something else?
The scenes that dive into the unspoken presumptions within this group, and the verbal land mines they keep stepping on, are keenly observed; one in particular, wherein everyone tries to talk their way around the idea of a “black accent,” is as tense and cringe-worthy as anything in the “Diversity Day” episode of “The Office.” And throughout those encounters, Silva bets (correctly) that he can’t go wrong if he keeps returning to Mitchell’s bemused reactions.
But once the situation is set, it doesn’t go anywhere. Yes, the discomfort is palpable, and these guys sure are doing some white party nonsense, and Tyler feels like an outsider. But what then? “Tyrel” tells us very little in its back 80 minutes that it doesn’t say in the first ten; it’s all set-up for an absent payoff.
The performers do the best they can within the limitations of the material. Mitchell is charismatic and complicated, seeking out and working through variations on this stranger-in-a-strange-land theme, and Abbott, as ever, is incapable of a false note. Michael Cera finds the right combination of accommodation and obliviousness as the richest of their friends, and Caleb Landry Jones is, well, Caleb Ladry Jones (which is to say, disturbingly skeezy).
And Silva accurately captures the barely-contained chaos and clattering din of a drunken hang, of young guys getting drunker and louder in borderline mathematical parallel. But a little of this disorganized roaring of simultaneous bravado goes a long way; if I wanted to hang out with obnoxious drunk white guys for 90 minutes, I’d walk into literally any bar. This much of it, at the same volume and intensity for nearly an entire movie, gets exhausting.
The atmosphere hints at sinister goings-on, while obvious literary references (Tyler is reading “Lord of the Flies”) and dialogue like “Never trust the white man – they will let you die in the fucking wilderness” foreshadows gripping events that never arrive. The narrative build that most reasonable viewers would expect is simply missing in action. “Tyrel” boasts some fine performances and some compelling ideas, but ultimately, it plays like a version of Jordan Peele‘s “Get Out” where nothing happens. [C]
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