Photo: ‘The Obituary of Tunde Johnson'/Wolfe Releasing Diabolus Ex Machina Ali LeRoi’s ‘The Obituary of Tunde Johnson’ has a tightrope walk of a premise. Tunde, a gay African American teenager, is trapped in a time loop that always ends with him dying at the hands of the police. It’s a tricky balance, combining this popcorn movie conceit with a serious social issue, but the film mostly pulls it off. It’s anchored by a strong performance from Steven Silver, an up-and-coming actor from Netflix’s ‘13 Reasons Why’. As Tunde, Silver commits entirely as the narrative moves from high school soap opera to forbidden love story to coming-out drama to police brutality suspense to sci-fi mystery. At times, it feels like the film has bitten off more than it can chew, but in its best moments it has the idiosyncratic genre-hopping charm of ‘Donnie Darko’. Related article: Watch:
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