They Cloned Tyrone

4 outta 5

They Cloned Tyrone is a sci-fi horror comedy mash up that, much like the title implies, is made up of components from sci-fi movies that came before but ends up as something unique. The performances are all good, especially by Jamie Foxx playing a pimp with flair as he drops in well placed comedic asides. Tyrone tonally jumps all over the place; there’s horror thriller, sci-fi, social commentary, crazy twists, funny elements and more. It may be hard out there for a pimp but that’s only because there’s a giant clone conspiracy working silently underground.

Fontaine (John Boyega) is a drug dealer in the lower-class neighborhood known as the Glenn. A regular working day for him involves beating up folks and collecting cash from the local pimp, Slick Charles (Foxx). However, Fontaine’s day doesn’t end well when he’s shot by another criminal, Isaac (J. Alphonse Nicholson). The next day, things get weird when Fontaine wakes up in his bed completely unharmed and oblivious. This disturbs Charles since he thinks Fontaine is a ghost, but soon the two associates and Charles’ “employee”, Yo-Yo (Teyonah Parris) try to find out what is going on. Surprisingly, they discover secret passages and underground lairs beneath their simple town, and even more surprising they find exact duplicates of Fontaine and others. They discover people in their town are being mind-controlled by compounds in their fried chicken, or songs they listen to, or the hair products they use, or juice they drink. Eventually a mysterious man named Nixon (Keifer Sutherland) lays out the stakes of the little bubble world they are in, and almost everyone that they know may be a clone that can easily be controlled.   

The design aesthetic of the film is very much influenced by 1970s Blaxploitation films which makes it a little confusing when they reference modern things like BitCoin. Confusingly, there are a lot of boxy tube TVs but the reveal that the town is a manufactured experiment makes the old aesthetic go down easier. Even the technology in the underground lair has a mix of ‘70s analog and digital. Watching the film closely on Netflix includes reel change burns in the corner, which is unnecessary as it’s a digital film on a digital streaming service, but it does add to the movie’s ‘70s vibe. It’s basically a ‘70s exploitation film crashing into a sci-fi movie, which is a neat concept. The whole social message combined with sci-fi mind control plot skirts closely to Get Out, but not in a bad way. Also, Boyega previously starred in Attack the Block where his gangster takes on a sci-fi threat (in that case, aliens) threatening his low-income neighbourhood. That basic premise is also in Tyrone, although here it is mind controlled clones. It is just noticeable especially since Boyega is the lead in both movies. There’s a scene in Tyrone where the crew discovers all the cloning vats and slowly walks among them having intense emotional reactions which is a mandatory staple of sci-fi movies whenever clones are uncovered.

Boyega is great as Fontaine’s cold gangster life is upended by the reveal he’s a clone. Boyega shows Fontaine unable to settle back into his life after that revelation. The level of control being exerted on him extends further than he can comprehend. Fontaine’s unseen mother is always hiding inside her room and, after the clone reveal, he is pleading to see her, and the twist of what is behind the door lets Boyega show how emotionally wrecked Fontaine is. As there are multiple clones of him, Boyega gets to play a few different roles and the character he plays for the third act info dump/climax is particularly inventive.

Foxx as the pimp Slick Charles doesn’t do much emotional growth, but he does have funny reactions to all the craziness. He’ll have some awesome pimp-centric quips to provide and the costuming on him screams classic ‘70s pimp. Parris has some fun bits where she has had enough of Charles’ overbearing pimp and she wants to branch out of her own. She wants to instigate some kind of revolution after the cloning scheme is revealed while the two guys are too dejected. As the gangster who shoots Fontaine at the start, Nicholson plays a standard gangbanger type but there are some inventive twists he’s involved in. The main villainy is provided by Sutherland’s Nixon and at about an hour into the movie Sutherland shows up and basically drops a bomb in the story. He gets in a fantastic rant about why the town is set up as it is as he demonstrates his capacity for instant control over anyone. The funny part about his performance is that Nixon is jovial and folksy about his horrible job. He even says later when everything is going haywire that he’s become too soft in his gig.

They Cloned Tyrone is a genre mash up that slowly slides from one genre (criminal flick) to sci-fi epic (cloning chaos). The first time the crew ends up in an underground cloning facility juggles the two extreme tones deftly. There are good comedic bits and dramatically stirring moments for an experience that is never boring.