Destroyer
2013 · 11m · Canada
Directed by Kevan Funk
Genres: coming-of-age, crime, drama
Tones: contemplative, dark, tense
A young hockey player is haunted by something he witnessed at a teammate's party, torn between loyalty and conscience.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A coming-of-age guilt drama that could've been a PSA, except Funk trusts the silence—lets the hockey rink itself become the confessional, which is the one move that keeps it from collapsing into moral clarity.
Formally situated in the lineage of Gus Van Sant's elliptical teen cinema, with precise editing that mirrors the protagonist's fractured memory of the witnessed moment, building ethical weight through compositional restraint rather than exposition.
The single decision that transforms this—casting a non-actor as the teammate and shooting their scenes in near-documentary flat light against the polished surfaces of the rink—creates a visual dissonance that does all the moral work the script doesn't have to.
Reviews
Funk uses this device both to unravel the specific nature of the deed, and also to visually draw out the mental images that haunt Tyson's mind. His moral center defies the pernicious ethics of his greater social and professional circle, which eventually corrodes his faith in the community to which he belongs.