They Cloned Tyrone

When some crazy shit happens, three unlikely heroes stumble onto a sinister conspiracy hidden beneath their neighborhood, and discover that all of the conspiracy tales are just the tip of the iceberg.

They Cloned Tyrone is a Blaxploitation-steeped Get Out meets Cabin in the Woods, with some of Clockwork Orange and Invasion of the Body Snatchers also thrown in for good measure too.

It’s an inventive, funny, and well-shot film, especially for one that feels like it hails from the low-end of the more medium budget spectrum. I especially liked how the movie’s opening scenes deliberately set up a specific tone, leaning very hard into some well-worn and expected tropes. Some viewers may even be tempted to tap out here, as it will seem like something we’ve all seen too many times before at this point, all from a type of movie that has grown a bit stale.

But as is soon revealed…

This is not that movie.

The film doesn’t quite stick the landing. The last half hour does feel a bit rushed and maybe a little obvious, but I think this is mostly due to the fact that the subject matter that the film is skewering is both too big for a feature length film to truly address, and also, it’s often close enough to our own sad reality that to go too deep would really just dampen the fun romp that is the core of this funny little sci-fi thriller.

Because an undeniable part of the whole thing is… the film is right.

Within the context of the film’s world, the events of this story happen because a certain part of society, the part with the highest concentration of money and power (white people), do not care about their fellow neighbors and community members who are living in situations like this, because they’re all the same, right? Did someone die? Was someone killed? They’re all interchangeable anyways, and besides, they were no angel, right?

They simply don’t care.

It’s just more fodder for the agenda pushed by their favorite frothing bigot Talking Head, the nonsense that they (white people) get down on their knees for every night, opening their throats, and eagerly swallowing. The abuses by this system, the harm that it causes, all happens out in the open, clear for anyone to see who cares to look, but most people simply don’t. These (white) people merely see what they expect to see, and then move on, often dismissively blaming the people in these situations—victims of a racist and oppressive system, stuck in a vicious cycle of poverty and crime directly due to that system—for their being in those situations in the first place.

At best, as they (white people) sit around their nice, safe dinner tables, in their nice, safe homes, in their nice, safe areas, protected by the very system that is responsible for exacerbating these issues, they may deign to advise those regularly persecuted by the system for the reality of their birth and their financial status to “put their noses to the grindstone,” to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps,” without acknowledging the lack of resources and opportunities available to those people—a deliberate design of the system—and most especially, without ever acknowledging who it is exactly that is at fault for that reality in our society...

(White people)

They Cloned Tyrone is funny, smart, and it doesn’t give a fuck. It talks about the responsibility of being part of a community, and about ownership of the choices you make in life, but also about the reality of Systemic Racism, and the casual hatred for, and disregard of, people’s humanity by those in power, by the ones who maintain and benefit from, that system. There’s also a part in the film condemning civility politics too, and those who, like Satan in Paradise Lost, would rather reign in Hell than serve in Heaven, and how that particular ambition not only harms others, but often proves to be their own undoing too.

And again, all this, plus… it really is funny and smart, just a total good time. It’s an excellent little sci-fi action/thriller.

I loved it.

So, big thumbs up for They Cloned Tyrone. It’s on Netflix, definitely check it out, especially since you've all seen Barbie and Oppenheimer by now.