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| Images courtesy of Anchor Bay |
Sean Whalen first started out as a character actor making
small appearances in The People Under the Stairs and Batman Returns before
working his way into such sizable Hollywood productions as Waterworld, Twister
and The Cable Guy. A familiar
face in film who eventually became a recurring bit player in Rob Zombie films
as well as The FP, the actor’s foray in and out of horror and television
paved the way for what would or wouldn’t develop into his feature-film debut as
a writer-director with the laundromat-set sock monster horror-comedy Crust
now releasing through Anchor Bay Entertainment.
A film that absolutely springboards from both Roger Corman and Frank Oz’s
iterations of Little Shop of Horrors as well as Don Thacker’s talking-mold
gross-out Motivational Growth, this micro-budget chamber pieced indie on
paper should be patently absurd. But as an
originating idea stemming from Sean Whalen’s own brushes with Tinseltown, it
feels like the formal announcement of a new comedy-horror film series
especially towards the end. Not quite as
bold as, say, Quentin Dupieux’s Rubber but still plainly of the same
ilk.
Vegas (Sean Whalen) has experienced a meteoric rise and fall
from promising child-actor to depressed middle-aged alcoholic laundromat owner
co-managed by his boozing but dependable friend Russ (Daniel Roebuck). Whiling away the time watching the movie’s
version of Entertainment Tonight, one day after being humiliated by some
boorish social media influencers he cries into a pile of socks which inexplicably
animates the socks into a shape shifting blob-amoeba like monster. Soon upon the bullies’ return, the sock
monster attacks, kills and eats a man leaving Vegas to deal with cleaning up
the mess. Despite initial fears of the
unknown, Vegas treats the sock monster like a pet which he names Crust
and the two soon form a bond that is threatened by the arrival of Nila (Rebekah
Kennedy) a young actress who takes a liking to Vegas which diverts his
attention from the hungry needy sock monster.
Soon his ex-girlfriend Laura (Felissa Rose) crawls back into the scene
and over time amid pressures coming from hotshot TV star Randy (Alan Ruck),
Vegas becomes increasingly ornery and irascible as though the sock monster
triggered the emergence of his own inner id.
While clearly tongue-in-cheek insta-cult microbudget practical-effects
driven satire that straddles a fine line between beer-and-pizza film and trained
character study, Crust co-written by Jim Wald lensed in black-and-white
by cinematographer/editor Jaren Lewis with some occasional color tinting such
as when Vegas cries bright blue tears in the film’s opening is a wild
hoot. Leaning heavily into goofiness
while also shining a bright spotlight on alcohol soft middle-aged depression in
what feels like an autobiographical expression of the director-writer-star Sean
Whalen, it subtly speaks to his own experiences as a Hollywood bit player who
for whatever reason decided over time it wasn’t for him. As an actor-turned-director one man show
piece, I was reminded of Tom Noonan’s What Happened Was… as far as
flirting with elements of the romantic comedy and the horror film. The monster itself looked a little bit like
the short parody film Night of the Living Bread crossed with The Blob
and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.
This could’ve been throwaway cult nonsense but Whalen makes
it into a tragicomic study of madness with Whalen going steadily off the rails
while his partner played by The Fugitive actor Daniel Roebuck comes off
like a Mr. Mushnik type who might be insufferable but can see the bigger
picture as far as what this sock monster is bringing out of his business
partner. A standout scene involves Whalen
happily dancing away throughout the laundromat with the monster set to Bobby
Day’s Rockin’ Robin. The only
drawback to the piece involves an ongoing running gag about a media frenzy
surrounding an embarrassing video of Vegas.
It feels forced into an already strange and silly universe featuring
supernatural detectives and conniving social media influencers but no
matter. At the heart of it all is Sean
Whalen who has delivered a film that absolutely merits a sequel following this
unlikely mad and murderous dynamic duo of man and monster into whatever
murderous exploits they encounter next.
--Andrew Kotwicki
