Tyger Tyger (rent or buy) - Stream It or Skip It

Mondragon’s strange brew of road trip, pandemic thriller and addiction drama has no intention of playing by the rules with a freewheeling narrative that is often incomprehensible. Tyger Tyger is released on all major digital platforms on June 28th.

Kerry Mondragon’s feature-length debut, Tyger, Tyger, is guaranteed to divide critics and the public with its daring, avant-garde exploration of addiction, inequality, isolation and pandemic.

Within a dystopian American landscape ravaged by a pandemic, we are introduced to Blake (Sam Quartin), who lives on the edge of society as she robs local pharmacies to keep her head and those of others above water. Blake steals to deliver life-saving medication to the people suffering on the fringes of a country where wealth and privilege dictate health and life expectancy. However, during one of her armed robberies, Blake takes Luke (Dylan Sprouse), an addict and dealer, hostage before embarking on a road trip that leads them to an underground world of survival on the periphery of a broken society.

Mondragon’s strange brew of road trip, pandemic thriller and addiction drama has no intention of playing by the rules with a freewheeling narrative that is often incomprehensible. As a result, many will be left cold, confused, and frustrated as they bounce from character to character with little structure to guide them.

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Filmed before COVID-19, it would be easy to label Mondragon’s film as a new-age pandemic thriller. However, this distracts from several deeper messages beneath the surface. First, Mondragon’s view of the ‘pandemic’ is rooted in a dissection of capitalism and the social inequality it creates. Drug addiction, HIV and poverty are all pandemics of modern society, ignored and sidelined due to those affected; those suffering are ostracised and discarded unless they carry wealth, power or privilege. These underlying themes are urgent, meaningful and timely. But they are also too often sidelined by a story that never quite finds its feet, with a set of characters who lack depth. As a result, Mondragon’s fever dream of striking imagery and sound sadly feels incomplete.