If you’re going to make the greatest movie of all time, you’ll need explosions, guns, fight scenes, car chases, girls, and elves (if you want to live up to The Lord of the Rings). At least, that’s the movie that backyard stuntmen Clay, Lance, and Sander intend to make in ode to their fallen friend.
In writer-director Dempsey Bryk’s debut feature Crash Land, local loser Darby (played by the filmmaker’s brother Billy) dies doing what he loves most: wiping out on camera in front of his fellow dirtbag pals. Before the tragedy sets in, of course, each takes turns hitting Darby’s corpse in the nuts, teabagging him, and flinging his limp body around. It’s played for laughs, and it’s the sort of humor that infuses the rest of the film: physical comedy set to a backdrop of existentialism and morbidity.
Crash Land takes place in Inch, a desolate Canadian town where nothing happens. Everyone in Inch hates these boys, who spend their days shooting “stunts” on a camcorder, drinking beers, smoking darts, and generally disturbing the peace. After Darby’s funeral, chief instigator Lance (Gabriel LaBelle of The Fabelmans acclaim) and tenderhearted Clay (Noah Parker) have an epiphany. Darby’s death won’t be meaningless. The gang will make a real movie, perhaps the greatest of all time, and Darby will be immortalized with old footage of him integrated throughout. It’s a tall order in memoriam of someone whose last words were “eat my ass.”
To accomplish such a feat, their orphaned buddy Sander (Stranger Things’ Finn Wolfhard) will direct the movie, Clay will don a cut-out mask of Darby’s face to be his stand-in, and soft-spoken neighborhood girl Jemma will play the kidnapped princess. (The plot clearly came second to the stagecraft.) Jemma, played by Abby Quinn (also in Billy Bryk and Wolfhard’s debut Hell of a Summer), brings ideas of her own and convinces the boys that the movie needs emotion and heart. Offset, a romance between her and Clay sparks, too.
Equal parts crass and touching, Crash Land skillfully delivers a succinct, 90-minute tragicomedy about grief, growing up, and finding meaning in the nothingness. With many scenes shot on handheld by the actors themselves, the movie feels intentionally amateurish à la Jackass. The humor is boyish and crude like Trailer Park Boys, with many eccentric townspeople filling out the cast of characters. Stunts include barreling toward flaming sets in open fields, poking each other with stun guns, licking feces, and lots of punches to the genitals in montaged clips. “I drank my own piss for this film,” Wolfhard said during the SXSW post-screening Q&A, though that didn’t make the final cut.
But what elevates the film from plain raucous idiocy are the sincere moments between the shenanigans. Dempsey Bryk’s screenplay is at its best when the characters reach their emotional breaking points and find comfort in one another’s shared brotherhood. Each has dimensionality to them, and it’s clear that’s what Bryk was interested in. Crash Land whips back and forth yet never loses steam. It’s the type of low-budget coming-of-age picture that could only be pulled off when the actors onscreen are just as close friends (and real-life brothers) as the crew who put it together.
