Westhampton Review: Making Honest Amends  

Finn Wittrock shines in Christian Nilsson’s debut feature, Westhampton, as a filmmaker wracked with guilt over his regrettable past.

Tom Bell (Finn Wittrock, of Ratched) left his hometown the first chance he got and never looked back. He moved out to Los Angeles to pursue his dreams of becoming a filmmaker and while he gained some degree of success when he first started out, his more recent work is decidedly lacking.  

While he wants to move on from talking about his debut film, it’s the only project of his that can draw any attention to his work as a filmmaker. The plot of the movie is based on a horrible accident that happened to Tom the night of his senior year prom, which forever changed the trajectory of his life and the lives of his most cherished friends. 

When Tom’s sister begs him to return to their childhood home to pack up his remaining items left in their deceased parents’ soon-to-be-sold house, Tom heads back to Westhampton, New York, with his head hanging extraordinarily low. As news of his return unavoidably travels, he must face the past he has spent years trying to outrun and the consequences of his actions both past and present. 

Westhampton is a stirring character study that looks at the way our past can both shape and destroy us if we choose to let it. With Tom, Nilsson crafts an utterly complex and deeply troubled main character trying to avoid his past at all costs. His homecoming holds nightmarish complications as he is being forced to confront the consequences of his actions that he has never been able to own up to. 

Ultimately, Westhampton serves as a story about learning to make peace with past mistakes and live with moments you wish you could take back. While Tom parades around the first half of the film, placing all his failings and moments of shame and regret on the town he grew up in, he is forced to reconcile with the fact that it’s not his hometown he hates, but the person he was when he lived here. 

He’s avoided returning home so he wouldn’t be forced to take responsibility for the selfish decisions he made that irrevocably hurt the people he loved the most. It’s as if long ago, Tom decided his actions were so irredeemable that the only thing he could do was leave as if he were never there. As if removing his presence from the lives of those he hurt would lessen the impact of his actions. 

While Tom thinks this is the best way to help his loved ones move on, Nilsson’s writing shows this decision is completely self-serving, especially after he makes a successful film about the accident. Tom’s movie, which we, the audience, do get to see snippets from, is told from an omniscient point of view and shot in black and white.

It’s presented as an objective film portraying the events of Tom’s senior year leading up to the night of the accident. However, the movie, in all actuality, is Tom’s truth being presented to the audience as fact. Nilsson shows it’s not his way of coming to terms with what happened, but rather trying to rewrite the past to take some of the blame off of himself. 

Nilsson’s film is a masterfully written and surprisingly entertaining story about the importance of accountability. Finn Wittrock gives a tour-de-force performance as Tom, able to express the emotional pain and exhaustion his character has been experiencing in the decades since his life-defining accident. He portrays Tom’s regret and denial with a stubborn relentlessness that effortlessly conveys the years of discontent that have haunted his life. 

Wittrock breathes life into Nilsson’s script and grounds the film in a deep state of reality, allowing audiences to understand that the path to redemption is long but walkable. It’s the type of complex anti-hero that can make you understand your worst mistakes do not need to define you as long as you are able to earnestly take accountability for your actions. 

Westhampton was screened at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 7-14, 2025 .