“Reeling” opens with a long, ominous one-shot in which the familiar experience of returning home takes on a strange, uncanny hue. Ryan (Ryan Wuestewald) arrives at his family’s Oahu estate, after an unspecified time away. As the camera trails behind him and he walks the ground of the homestead, he encounters a parade of family friends who greet him warmly, and who he looks at almost like they’re aliens. Even his siblings, Meg (Nikki DeParis) and John (Hans Christopher), are treated with initial hesitation before they (re)introduce themselves. As a quiet panic becomes obvious in Ryan’s eyes, the happy return begins to feel like a nightmare.
Executive-produced by Werner Herzog, whose influence can be felt in the film‘s mix of improv and scripted scenes, “Reeling” frequently pauses the narrative to observe the young, attractive party at the celebratory luau Meg throws for her birthday, as they play volleyball, roast a pig, and lounge on the beach. And yet even with these quiet moments inflating the film’s scant 70-minute running time, there’s a gnawing scent of doom in the air, the sense that Ryan’s time in his home will be pivotal and tragic. At its best, Yana Alliata’s sharp feature finds a balance between both serenity and stress, effectively placing the audience in the mind of its confused audience surrogate.
The circumstances of Ryan’s situation are explained deliberately, and carefully, from the interactions he has with the other guests and the way they talk about him behind his back. A scar running up his head is the early clue to an accident from some five years ago, one that left him with brain damage, memory loss, motor skill issues, and an inability to regulate his emotions. We don’t get much indication of who Ryan was before this happened to him and forced him into the care of his mother (away in California for a vacation while Ryan was foisted onto his siblings) but the information we do get — like his ability to recall a line or two from “Hamlet” — points to someone intelligent and outgoing, now left feeling like a shell of his former self.
The screenplay, from Alliata and Amy Miner, deftly conveys Ryan’s status as an outsider to this once-familiar world. While most of the guests are polite to Ryan, they also clearly avoid him: In a tender moment, he talks to a salamander on the ground and asks if it will be his friend when nobody else will. Meg is ostensibly supportive but treats Ryan with infantilizing kids’ gloves and excludes him subtly, forcing him to stay in a remote guest house away from the rest of the party. Older brother John is more openly antagonistic, berating and demeaning Ryan when he can’t perform basic chores, but John also clearly carries some guilt and self-loathing that causes him to lash out. All three actors are strong and believable as siblings with a charred and difficult family past, finding natural notes of grace even when their actions verge on the loathsome. Wuestewald is particularly affecting as Ryan, ably portraying his confusion and almost foggy-brained viewpoint of the world.
Aside from the three main actors, the majority of the film features largely nonprofessional actors, cast from Alliata’s real friends and family from her childhood in Hawaii. Their presence is a seamless backdrop for the main characters, and in careful quiet moments where the film stops to watch the partygoers swimming on the beach or playing volleyball, a real sense of time and place is conveyed (the fact that almost everyone at this “traditional” luau is white goes largely uncommented on, even when the siblings’ uncle, played by Michael Carter, gives a speech about island spirits). Alliata’s camera, rich with golden and blue hues (Rafael Leyva served as director of photography) is often particularly fixated on the male guests, a parade of buff, shirtless men whose masculinity feels pointedly contrasted with Ryan’s fragility, epitomizing the adult world he’s been locked out of.
Lurking in the background of “Reeling” is the mystery of what happened to Ryan, and as the sun goes down, the conflict boils over as his alienation and resentment further come to light. Alliata is skilled at using her filmmaking to situate the audience within Ryan’s head, often using long tracking shots to build up stress while making heavy use of Michael MacAllister’s plodding, percussive score. A standout scene soundtracked to acapella singing with the sound otherwise muted captures the hazy, fuzzy feeling of drunken euphoria before the sound kicks back, and Ryan hits another low. Not every technical gambit works — multiple switches in aspect ratios in the third act feel more distracting than revealing — but “Reeling” succeeds in its goal of immersing the audience in Ryan’s viewpoint at all times.
Once the movie moves from painting a portrait of a moment in these people’s lives to answering the questions it raises, “Reeling” starts to feel more generic, as its family drama proves fairly predictable and well-trodden. The conclusion to Ryan and John’s conflict proves more than a little pat, and the end note of the film is ambiguous in a way that feels unfinished. On a whole, though, “Reeling” and its stomach-churning birthday from hell make for an effective watch, and an experience that’s hard to forget.
Grade: B
“Reeling” premiered at the 2025 South by Southwest Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
Source link