Memory is a fragile thing. Between the limits of personal perspective, the preference of protecting one’s sense of self, and time, memories shift and change until they solidify in our minds in the version that best serves us. But what if your memories are stripped from you? Who are you then? What are you to others? Most interestingly, how does the social contract between friends and family shift as a result? This is the propulsive center of director/co-writer Yana Alliata’s feature debut Reeling (sometimes stylized as R E E L I N G), having its world premiere during SXSW 2025. Using a mixture of improvised and scripted approaches, Reeling is a tense family drama in which what was right and what is wrong collide against a backdrop of civility.
On what should be a festive event for Meg Brown (Nikki DeParis) as family and friends gather to celebrate her birthday, a great deal of tension arises in the air with the arrival of brother Ryan (Ryan Wuestewald). It’s been five years since an accident that left him with a traumatic brain injury (TBI) and his inclusion in the festivities is a return to normalcy that he may not be ready for. But as the party goes on and friction comes to a head between Ryan, Meg, and brother John (Hans Christopher), once thought lost memories threatened to return, bringing hard truths with them.
A still from REELING in which Ryan escapes family chaos for a moment to contemplate a changing horizon as the thundering waves at Pounders Beach hammer the shoreline of Laie, Oahu. Photo Credit: Rafael Leyva. Photo courtesy of SXSW.
When it comes to injuries that change your life, there’s the “before” period and the “after.” For many folks, if you cannot get back to the “before” lifestyle, there’s a sense of being a burden or problem. Many in the disabled community discover this and it’s reflected in the systems and laws of most countries, with the disabled reduced to second-class citizenry. Co-writers Alliata and Amy Miner (Rush) bake this into the narrative of Reeling almost entirely from the start as we observe Ryan drive himself to a residence, park, and struggle to get himself out of the vehicle with all of his things in one smooth trip. Nothing about the car, his things, or any aspect of what he’s tasked with doing is designed for someone with his impairment, which, as we come to learn from listening to Ryan, is more memory-based than physical. Now, on the one hand, members of the disabled community face daily struggles functioning in an ableist society, so observing Ryan is more about instructing the audience on who Ryan is through Wuestewald’s performance, seeing the rise and fall of anxiety, the brief dysregulation occur, before Ryan moves toward the property and into the introductions of the guests. Impressively, from the moment Ryan exits the vehicle to the end of saying hello, Alliata shoots it as an extended one-shot, a technical choice that causes the audience to live in the moment with Ryan (centered throughout the sequence) as he (re)meets everyone there. Though Alliata and Miner don’t explicitly define relationships between Ryan and others, one is able to deduce that the birthday girl, Meg, is Ryan’s sister and that they have an uncle, Pat (Michael E. Carter), among the party guests, but it’s the inclusion of John that’s the most telling by virtue of presentation and performance. In this extended take, DeParis makes Meg overly-eager to see Ryan, making sure that he’s comfortable talking with folks, but also utilizing (intentionally or not) micro-aggressions related to his memory loss that dictate things for him versus asking him. It may seem inconsequential, but there’s a difference between telling someone where they are sleeping and giving them the choice, especially when the decision is directly connected to someone’s health. (This is weaponized by Meg later in the film, putting on him his inability to make choices when he’s rarely given the chance to.) Similarly, the introduction of Christopher’s John is brisk and curt, as though Ryan’s mere presence is a problem, and it’s not until later that we, the audience, know that the two are siblings. The difference in performance and characterization speaks volumes as to how Meg and John view their brother, but where one seems cruel via overt disdain and frustration, the other is slowly revealed to be masking the same feelings, a mask that slips over extended time with Ryan and the emergence of other side effects of his injury. In the director’s statement on Alliata’s website, she speaks to the film being specifically about memory, yet it’s equally a film about the way society views the disabled and how they can just as easily be shunned when deemed useful or problematic.
An interesting revelation from Alliata’s website is the declaration of using a mixture of professional/non-professional actors with scripted/improvised scenes. Watching the film without this knowledge, there’s a fascinating awareness that we’re only getting parts of conversations and, some of what we do get, is only what’s within earshot of Ryan. That means that the audience isn’t privy to anything he’s not, thereby creating a cone of silence, as it were, in the spaces Ryan doesn’t exist in. Literally, it means that the audience joins Ryan in the sensation that his world is only as far as he can see, touch, and hear (aided by the notes he takes when memory fails). Metaphorically, it speaks to the ways in which even those who are bound by blood can keep us at arm’s length due to the discomfort a disabled member of the family can bring, often merely by being nearby. What is confirmed to be truth, however, is that we know about as much as Ryan does and by Alliata bringing us close to conversations and away again, over and over, we only get tidbits, just as we would while naturally moving through a group. The context is up to us to discover, to decide, or to engage and ask for more information. It’s in this way that for much of the film, shot in daylight and only lingering in the evening during the third act, Wuestewald conveys great apprehension and loneliness against the backdrop of beautiful of Oahu, generating a sensation of palatable anxiety for the audience as we observe how these people who should care for him slowly shift from excited inclusionary allies to discontent and frustration because Ryan isn’t now who he was then.
As beautiful the film is — partially due to the location, partially due to cinematographer Rafael Leyva — and as strong as the performances are, Reeling often is at its strongest in moments than as a whole. If the intention is to investigate the way that memory shapes individuals, then there would be a bit more outside of Ryan’s cone of perception. By locking the audience to Ryan, especially in the third act, all we feel is isolation and rejection, despite what the truth implies. In fact, it’s because of what the truth implies that an even dimmer view of the family can be taken. Then, in the final moments, what the script suggests speaks less to the significance of memory and more to the ways in which members of the disabled community see themselves as disposable, as in the way. If the intent of the film is to explore how memory shapes us, how perception of self is chained to what we know of ourselves, the script and its execution find themselves less able to navigate their intentions through the use of visual or sonic poetry instead of through more reliable concrete imagery.
There’s no denying that Alliata has a strong understanding of craft and that the script by Alliata and Miner is an evocative one, brought wonderfully to life by Wuestewald’s painfully complex performance, but the way it all comes together, especially in its disquieting conclusion, it doesn’t so much evoke a rumination on memory but on the presumed disposability of the disabled.
Screening during SXSW 2025.
For more information, head either to the official Reeling SXSW webpage or director’s website.
Final Score: 3 out of 5.
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Categories: In Theaters, Reviews
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