For better and for worse, our pasts do a lot to shape who we are and the people we become in our lives. In the case of Finn Wittrock in the upcoming drama Westhampton, it threatens to destroy him. The film casts the American Horror Story alum as Tom Bell, a filmmaker haunted by a tragedy he was responsible for back in high school and grappling with it through his art. He returns to a hometown that doesn’t want him anymore, in turn ripping open old wounds for the people still living there and finally confronting his own pain and grief. Ahead of its arrival in New York and Los Angeles theaters on July 10, Collider can exclusively share the official trailer, offering a glimpse into the guilt he feels and the disdain he left behind.
The footage opens with Tom making his way back to the titular Westhampton while a moderator asks him to discuss a movie he made inspired by his past. Despite how testy he gets about it, Tom clearly stuck close to true events, right down to the devastating traffic accident that changed his life. No details are explicitly shared, but it’s clear that his poor decision-making got a young woman killed in high school, and he hasn’t exactly done much in the townsfolk’s eyes to earn forgiveness. All he’s there to do is get some stuff of his and get out, but he can’t help but get drawn back into the lives of the people who either want to get closer to him and pick his brain or want to snap his neck. Even a local cop, who saw his film, is out to ensure Tom knows the damage he caused, either through threats to do his business and get out, or by beating it into his skull.
Westhampton is set up as a dream-like exploration of past actions, grief, how forgiveness is earned, and how to find peace with oneself after a seemingly unforgivable mistake. Complicating matters for Tom is his film. The in-universe “Westhampton” earned him a level of acclaim he’s been struggling to replicate, but in the town it’s named for, it’s seen as little more than an attempt to bend the narrative in his favor. Old friends and people who knew him felt more burned by that than his accident, considering he never really opened up about it before blowing it up on the screen for all to see. Tom will have to face their disdain, learn to really understand the lives he ruined, and realize how his actions have only compounded the hurt to both himself and everyone around him, if he hopes to move on.
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
Who Is Behind ‘Westhampton’?
Behind the camera as writer, director, and producer of Westhampton is Christian Nilsson. It marks just his second feature film, coming five years after his 2021 thriller flick Dashcam — not to be confused with the Rob Savage film of the same name released that year. His latest was met with modest praise at its Tribeca Film Festival premiere last year, with the cast, particularly Wittrock, earning high marks for giving the coming-of-age story the dramatic heft it deserves. RJ Mitte, Jake Weary, Amy Forsyth, Joy Suprano, Sam Strike, and Tovah Feldshuh round out the bunch alongside newcomer Roxanne Schiebergen.
Westhampton premieres in theaters in New York and Los Angeles on July 10. Check out the trailer in the player above.
