Have you ever wondered what happens to those socks that go missing in the dryer? Well, Crust posits an answer, and if you get queasy easily, you may just want to stop reading right there.
Paul “Vegas” Winters (Sean Whelan, who has been in darn-near everything since 1990, but whom you may recognize him from the cult classic The People Under the Stairs) is a former child actor that disappeared from the public eye after being part of an Eight Is Enough-style sitcom as a child. As an adult, he’s somewhat content / resigned to living in a laundromat and acting as its owner / manager, where he can hide in the back office from the rest of the world. This idyllic lifestyle gets turned on its head one night, when a group of rowdy twenty-somethings comes into his shop hopped up on drugs and ready to watch the dryers go round-and-round for entertainment. One of these hooligans busts into the back office just as Vegas is himself busting into a sock stolen from an unsuspecting laundromat user’s basket (warned ya), and the intruder recognizes Vegas as the former actor, gets the entire thing on his phone, and uploads it to social media. Vegas tosses the sock into a nearby heap of other “missing” items and bursts into tears, and like Frosty the Snowman if it were directed by John Waters, there must have been some magic in those old used socks that day, because his tears of sorrow magically mix with… other things that you may not want to think about, and the adorable monster Crust is born from the mix. From there, over the course of the film, Crust becomes the embodiment of Vegas Winters’ needs for both revenge and sympathy.
Vegas Winters might not immediately seem like the most sympathetic protagonist, since the first time you see him, he’s sharing a spot of solo love with a stranger’s sock, but Whalen actually does a great job of making you feel for the poor shlub. As not only the film’s main actor, but also the writer, producer, and director of Crust, Whalen proves that he’s been in the biz long enough to pick up a few well-honed tricks. The cinematography is pretty good, for being shot almost entirely within the confines of a run-down laundry, the dialogue is well-written, natural, and funny, and there are even some rom-com tearjerker elements in play here, as Vegas falls in love with one of his regular laundry-goers. The lady in question is named Nila, and is played by the talented Rebekah Kennedy, who has also been in a ton of things, most recently Netflix’s The Lincoln Lawyer. Her portrayal of Nila as a minor-league actress striving for better is both heartfelt and full of humor. Along with these two are veteran actors Daniel Roebuck (Final Destination) as Vegas’s drunken but caring assistant manager / best friend Russ; Alan Ruck (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off) as Vegas’s childhood co-star (and former childhood bully) Randy, who comes back into the laundry-lord’s life just as a major studio is trying to get a reboot of their old show off the ground; William Gabriel Grier (Paranormal Blacktivity) as the mysterious Agent Bynes, hot on Crust’s murderous trail; and the always fun and fabulous Felissa Rose (Sleepaway Camp) as Vegas’s sleazy ex.
Despite what you might think from the initial description, Crust is a pretty fun time. It knows when to tug at your heartstrings, when to keep things light, and when to make you cringe (maybe all three of these during the most unexpected musical number since 1994’s The Mask), and it even contains a twist you may not see coming at the end. Part Clerks and part what would happen if Tim Burton took mushrooms and tried to direct a low-budget remake of Little Shop of Horrors, Crust is definitely unique, so far as revenge-fantasies go. Or it’s at least a better way to spend a night than watching socks go round-and-round in the dryer at the laundromat. If the ending is any indication, there’s likely a sequel on the way, and where it goes from here, who the heck knows. If Whelan is back both in front of and behind the camera, though, it should prove itself to be bizarrely magical.
