THE STORY – Haunted by an accident he caused in high school, a damaged filmmaker is forced to go back to the scene of the tragedy and face the friends whose lives he ruined and a town that disdains him. Jumping between the present and an indie film he made about the accident reveals how the true events played out far differently than depicted in his movie.
THE CAST – Finn Wittrock, RJ Mitte, Jake Weary, Amy Forsyth, Tovah Feldshuh & Dan Lauria
THE TEAM – Christian Nilsson (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 94 Minutes
For the “film within a film” device to be effective, audiences have to be convinced that the movie existing only within the world of the one we are watching could feasibly exist. Thomas Bell’s “Westhampton” – sharing its title with Christian Nilsson’s actual film, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 7 – appears just real enough to pass that test, and not only because of the (actual) film’s running joke that it’s just “another shitty ‘Garden State.'” The movie Thomas (Finn Wittrock, an emotional wreck here) made is an autobiographical romantic tragedy based on his childhood in the titular Long Island town; it focuses on his senior year of high school when he fell in love with a girl against her older brother’s/his best bud’s wishes, agreed to skip town with her to California, and never made it that far due to a car accident on the night of their prom. The movie Nilsson wrote and directed charts Thomas’ journey back to Westhampton, both to screen his film and to face the music he left playing when he fled well before making a movie about the heartbreak he caused. Whether that pain was caused directly or indirectly is beside the point for Thomas and for those he hurt; they felt it, he felt it, and now, they’ll all have to feel it together.
In reality, Nilsson’s “Westhampton” is a whole lot closer to “Garden State” than the fictional film by Thomas Bell, though it doesn’t deserve the “shitty” designation. It’s a slight feature and delivered in an entirely different register than Nilsson’s previous efforts, 2020’s hit short “Unsubscribe” and 2021’s “Dashcam” (not the one directed by Rob Savage, oddly enough). While those works were primarily interested in depicting extreme forms of psychological horror on susceptible targets, “Westhampton” is most curious about the sort of psychological damage that traumatic misfortune can cause, from a victim’s reliance on substances to numb their pain to the impact of an equally troubling vice: Isolation.
The seclusion Thomas has voluntarily subjected himself to after the accident that, as his film suggests, killed his then-girlfriend Beth, cloaks him like a wet blanket he’s convinced himself is a shield. Lord knows how long it’s been since he last visited his hometown, a place full of people who never left and still despise him for “what he did to that poor girl,” as plenty of locals mutter in passing at the sight of him. It’s a stark contrast to the typical treatment a protagonist might receive in a film of this nature, where the forever-disturbed Golden Boy might return to his roots to the sound of a raucous reception that he can’t appreciate due to his own self-hatred.
Thomas certainly hates himself, but only because he’s never gotten over the events that defined his adolescence. His erstwhile best friend and Beth’s older brother, Dickie (“How To Blow Up a Pipeline’s” Jake Weary), became a cop for the Westhampton Beach Police Department, almost certainly because of what happened to his sister, and when he bumps into Thomas at a homecoming parade, Dickie is sure to give him a fist-flavored welcome. The third member of their juvenescent trio, Jay (Sam Strike), co-owns the small bookshop in the heart of town, a locale that plays a prominent role in Thomas’ movie. Jay and his wife filed a lawsuit against Thomas and his film, citing a lack of license to use their names, likenesses, and now business in his feature, and he’s not to set foot on the store’s premises. The only people who give Thomas the time of day are Fitz (“Breaking Bad’s” RJ Mitte), an old acquaintance, and Avery (Amy Forsyth), a young woman whose connection to his accident is unknown to Thomas when they share beers, a vape, and a steamy kiss on the beach on his first night back home.
That Nilsson is so keen to prominently include such intimate details about his characters and their histories together is no small feat, and they allow for the occasionally treacly film surrounding them to possess an emotional sophistication that it might otherwise lack had they been left for dead in the edit. The same goes for Thomas’ frequent, uncontrollable recollection of painful memories from that momentous senior year, an opportunity Nilsson takes to intercut scenes from Thomas’ film as further background for previously-stranded viewers, those itching for more context to what went down back when this man was a teenager. It’s especially notable considering that Thomas altered the truth for his film, not only making the Jay character Black but also modifying the fate of his heroine, a narrative choice that would sit well with no one, especially not her family members nor the woman herself. But all art is subjective, as they say, and Nilsson isn’t about to pretend that isn’t the case; Thomas is a complex figure dealing with a torturous perspective on what happened to him and his friends back in the day, and he told the story he felt most confident telling.
Should he have been allowed to tell the story at all? That’s not really a question that either “Westhampton” movie has on its mind, but one that its side characters certainly grapple with, turning Thomas’ wounds inside out the moment he undoes the stitches that had been holding them together for decades. Wittrock has never been better, playing a part that is in stride with the actor’s typical roles, while bringing his own mixture of ferocity, regret, and a profound sense of longing for simpler times or perhaps times where his wrongdoings don’t exist. He’s an actor with a brow that has always done him favors in the emotionality department, and his forehead has never worked harder than it does here (That’s a compliment, I swear!!). Weary, Forsyth, and Mitte, the biggest surprise of the three main supporters, each add varying levels of intricacies to Thomas’ already overwrought situation.
The thing is, he brought it on himself. As one character points out late in “Westhampton,” Thomas’ trip back to the motherland was more about coaxing his conscience than healing anyone else. “Apologizing now is selfish,” they tell him. “It’s how you feel better.” And while it takes some time for him to acknowledge that judgment day does eventually come, the form it takes is a stunner of a closing shot that serves as its own metatextual moment in a film chock-full of instances where life imitates art. Eventually, the education Thomas receives from showing his film to new audiences allows him to see his own work more clearly; “another shitty ‘Garden State,'” it is not, he comes to understand. It’s cute that Nilsson pokes fun at the very conceit of his own film with that recurring in-joke, but it’s far from fitting for the movie he’s made with “Westhampton,” This one is tender, thoughtful, and film-literate to boot. We don’t see Thomas’ version in full, but he could probably learn a few things should he plop down in a theater and watch a staggering tale from his own life unfold before his eyes.
