Boasting grimy imagery, a primal, tightly-written script, and a breakout performance by a promising young newcomer, Kat Candler’s Hellion–an expansion of her 2012 short that tore up the festival circuit–is the best juvenile delinquent film since last year’s indie darling, Destin Cretton’s Short Term 12. It captures the madness the boredom of a small, nowheresville town can elicit in restless teens and examines the inextricable link shared by a family in mourning.

In a standout performance, first-timer Josh Wiggins (discovered by Candler on Youtube) plays Jacob, a 13-year-old troublemaker who lives in the Southeast Texas town of Port Arthur with his younger brother, Wes (Deke Garner), and their alcoholic, widower dad, Hollis (Aaron Paul). When we meet the family, it’s quickly apparent that they haven’t shaken the effects of their mother’s passing. Hollis is trying his hardest to stop drinking away his problems, and Jacob wastes his time smashing trucks with baseball bats, setting things on fire, and doing other stuff troubled teens in indie movies do.

Little Wes is less troubled than his dad and brother, but Jacob insists on dragging him along on his daily knucklehead hijinks, acting as a poisonous influence while, more importantly, putting Wes in danger. Eventually, Child Protection Services catch wind of the unhealthy environment Hollis and Jacob have created for Wes and transfer him into the care of his aunt, Pam (Juliette Lewis). With Wes out of the house and Pam threatening to move far away, separating the family forever, Hollis spirals down into the bottoms of bottles and Jacob becomes more reckless and frustrated than ever.

The absence of Jacob’s mom is the movie’s foundation, driving the story even in its quietest moments: when Hollis scolds Jacob in his pickup truck, ordering him to “take responsibility”; when Jacob stares at Hollis with a defiant snarl because he doesn’t want to eat his sandwich. Through all the tension, we know they’d connect if only they could admit to each other what’s really eating them up on the inside.

“I miss her.”

“I miss her, too.”

Candler sets the dusty, muggy town of Port Arthur to a furious metal soundtrack including the likes of Metallica and Slayer. It’s an unusual mix, but one that turns out to be a match made in heaven. Watching Jacob tear across a motocross course on his dirt bike (his only productive hobby) while crunchy guitars blast on the speakers is a thrill, and the obligatory lens flare from the sun gives everything a nostalgic glow that’ll have you missing the days when you could just go outside with your friends and roll around in the muck for fun. All in all, Candler and her team’s presentation is top-notch and stirringly atmospheric.

Wiggins is a superstar in his debut, capturing the volcanic nature of teens harboring too much energy for their undeveloped bodies to contain. He makes good decisions and reacts well to what he’s given his more experienced adult counterparts. Paul played a young punk himself in the role of his career in Breaking Bad, and he slips into the role of flawed father figure nicely here. Lewis is pleasingly cast against-type, playing perhaps her most chemically balanced character ever with honesty and naturalism. She’s a wonderful surprise and overachieves in a role that could have been one-note.

The way the film wraps up feels a bit odd, with a home invasion sequence feeling tonally dissonant. Lewis thankfully saves the otherwise overblown scene with a wonderfully grounded reaction, and Wiggins follows suit. While the ending could have been a knockout had it gone in a gutsier, off-the-beaten-path direction, it still manages to emphasize the film’s poignant message: A broken family is still a family.

Hellion trailer

An expansion of Kat Candler’s 2012 short film of the same name, Hellion, starring Aaron Paul, Juliette Lewis, and newcomer Josh Wiggins, follows a family in Souteast Texas reeling from the loss of their mother. Wiggins plays 13-year-old Jacob, an unruly spirit with a passion for motocross and metal music who isn’t the healthiest influence on his younger brother. Paul plays Jacob’s father, who’s trying desperately to keep his sons out of trouble while suppressing his own demons. When the household begins to spin out of control, the boys’ aunt (Lewis) calls Child Protective Services, threatening to break up the family for good.

We spoke to Kat and Josh at the 57th San Francisco International Film Festival back in April about the film’s soundtrack, getting help from Metallica, Aaron and Josh’s chemistry on set, why Josh isn’t allowed on bikes anymore, casting Juliette in an atypical role, and more.

Hellion opens tomorrow, July 4th at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco.

Let’s start with the soundtrack. It was nice to hear metal in a movie for a change!

Kat: The Hellion short and Black Metal both had metal soundtracks. Working with Metallica on this one was kind of a dream come true. Coming into the film, my ideal scenario was to have Metallica do the score. Jeff Nichols, our executive producer, knew Lars [Ulrich], so he connected us. Lars said that they were a little too busy to do the score, but that they would help us with music from their existing catalogue that we’d be interested in using in the film. It was pretty incredible when he called for the first time! “Hi Kat, this is Lars!” [laughs]

“Oh, oh hi…LARS ULRICH!”

Kat: [laughs] It was very surreal! They were incredibly generous and it was a dream. Working with The Sword was great, and Relapse Records was great to us.

Josh, do you like Metal?

Josh: I…[laughs]…I grew up in Texas, and that’s not the main culture there. But after this movie I gained more of an appreciation for it. Before, it was pretty hard, but I can listen to it now.

Kat: I made all of the boys mix CDs of a bunch of metal. [To Josh] I think you guys only listened to it, like, once! [laughs]

I’m a fan of black metal in particular, though I do get made fun of for that a lot. Aaron Paul is coming off of the most definitive role of his career so far, in which he played a hellion himself. Josh, did he help you get more comfortable in your role?

Josh:I was very nervous on my first day coming in, but he has a way of making you feel comfortable really fast. He encouraged me to go to these places and not be afraid. Going where you need to go is very important.

Even though Aaron was coming off of Breaking Bad, any ties I had to that character faded very quickly. He speaks differently in this film, with a little bit of a growl.

Kat: I’d only gotten through two episodes of Breaking Bad. I’d gotten to the bathtub episode. Basically, I chose not to go on that journey. [laughs] But then I saw Smashed in the movie theater with my husband, and I just loved his performance in that film. Then I went back and watched the rest of Breaking Bad. There’s such an honesty to him on screen. I’m really excited about seeing him play something completely different from what audiences are used to. I liked taking that journey with him; figuring out a new character, playing a dad. He’s really easy and trusting. He was incredibly trusting of me as a director. The first time I got he and Josh together in the house we shot in, it was so exciting. You just see the chemistry between them. He trusted that I was a director, and I was like, “Yeah! I am a director!” [laughs]

Josh, there’s an interesting push-and-pull dynamic between you and Aaron in the film. You’re kind of keeping each other afloat: When one starts to drown, the other will hold them up, and vice versa. It’s really subtle, complex stuff.

Josh:I kept pulling from what Aaron was doing and using it in my own way. You’re right; I think if one person improved in that family, the other would follow. They’re kind of on a chain.

Kat: You see these performances on set, but when you’re in the editing room, you’re watching all these tiny subtleties between the two of them, and you’re just like, “Holy shit. These guys are fucking good.” There were days when me and Alan, my editor, would just freak out. [To Josh] With you never having done this before, it’s kind of astounding how intuitive it is.

Like you said Josh, metal isn’t the biggest thing in Texas, but what I love about the film is the combination of the dusty, Southeast Texas landscape with the crunchy, raw soundtrack. Kat, talk about creating that atmosphere and building that world.

Kat: I started going down down to Southeast Texas when I was developing the script. Production design starts with the location, and that was so true with us. As I was writing the script, I was finding these amazing locations that encapsulate this town and this area. I’d use this little league field, refineries…I was like, “Oh my god…this exists! How do I incorporate this into the script!” We found this world; how do we pull the story and characters out of it and be respectful of that place as well?

Josh, did you actually ride that dirt bike?

Josh:I did not!

Dang! Did you even get on it or test it out?

Josh:It’s a funny story. [laughs] I’d ridden a bike, like, twice in my life. Because of that, Kat signed me up for motocross lessons. At first, it was just me riding my bike around a hill for a while. I was like, “I got this.” Then, the instructor was like, “Let’s try it when you let go of the clutch and you accelerate really fast.” I did it, and it was fine. Then he said, “Let’s do it again, but harder this time.” I did it way too hard and I did a wheelie and threw myself back onto the bike, kind of in a Superman position, trying to throw my fist forward to stop it. I’m swerving and swerving, trying to avoid the only tree that’s in the area for miles. [laughs] I eventually teetered and fell, but I was totally embarrassed.

Kat: He wasn’t allowed on a bike ever again. [laughs]

Josh:Other than that, it was great!

In terms of character actors, I think males outnumber females too much for me. I love female character actors, and you’ve got one of the best ones in your film, Juliette Lewis. But she’s not cast in her typical role of playing a cartoonish personality.

Kat: It was great, because like you said, she hadn’t really played this kind of role, this real, kind of subdued character. It was an interesting flip on people’s expectations of her. She was really rad to work with. She went places I wasn’t expecting. She’s incredible.

Do you have any metal recommendations for our readers who perhaps haven’t dipped their toes into the genre?

Kat: Metallica’s Kill ‘Em All is classic. Black Sabbath’s Paranoid. Pig Destroyer I love.

Josh:Slayer!

Kat: Slayer, yeah. I used Agalloch for the black metal short I was working on. I love them. Deafheaven I like a lot.

Sunbather is so good.

Kat: Right!? It’s funny, there’s a song on that album that I was trying so hard to fit into the film, but in the end it just didn’t work out.

I’m just glad we somehow got Deafheaven into this interview.

Kat: [laughs] The best!

The 57th annual San Francisco International film festival has been taking over Japantown in the Sundance Kabuki Cinema and New People Cinema, and the lineup of films so far hasn’t disappointed, with domestic and international gems from all genres. We’re only a few days into the festival, and there have already been plenty of highlights that you should keep your eye on in the near future (most of these selections have secured domestic distribution), plus one major disappointment.

Let’s start off with the bad news. Part of the festival’s Late Show program, Ti West’s found footage horror flick The Sacrament gathers the usual suspects West pals around with on indie film sets (Joe Swanberg, Amy Seimetz, Kate Lyn Sheil, AJ Bowen) and throws them into a secluded encampment called Eden Parish, constructed and inhabited by people who have a creepily cultish way about them. The film is presented via two cameras our protagonists (Vice journalists) bring to the jungled community to film a profile piece.

Though brimming with talent as is per usual for the merry bunch of indie darlings, their gifts are wasted, as the film can’t avoid the pitfalls of the found footage format, breaking the docu-style illusion when it begins to look too much like a narrative feature in its overblown third act. West, ever the inventive filmmaker, does some interesting things with the limitations the camera, building a decent amount of suspense as the journalists sneak around the open grounds of Eden Parish, but The Sacrament is a disappointment coming off the heels of modern horror powerhouses The House of the Devil and The Innkeepers.

It’s clean sailing from here. Hellion (above), a gritty family drama by Kat Candler set in dusty Southeast Texas, flaunts an excellent cast of screen vets and new blood alike, all of whom deliver the goods in a big way. The film stars Aaron Paul as a widower trying desperately to get his act together as his oldest son (impressive newcomer Josh Wiggins), the titular hellion who’s obsessed with metal, motocross, and vandalizing their tiny town with his punk friends, begins to drag his younger brother (Deke Garner) into his world of dangerous hijinks. The town catches wind of the family’s chaotic home situation, calling child services and threatening to tear them apart forever.

The film is subtle and tasteful, and also has a killer metal soundtrack that jibes well with the dirt-road, tin can setting. Wiggins, who Candler discovered in a Youtube video, is as talented a child actor as I’ve seen in quite some time, especially for a first-timer. His potential is scary. Paul fits into the fatherly role quite well considering he’s coming off of the most definitive role of his career as a hellion himself in Breaking Bad. Juliette Lewis is surprisingly cast in a subdued role as the aunt of the troubled boys, and it’s a bit of a delight to see her excel in such an un-cartoonish role.

A funny and surprisingly dark odyssey movie, David Zellner’s Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter has an incredibly unique premise that never loses its novelty or charm. Rinko Kikuchi plays Kumiko, a Japanese office worker who finds a VHS copy of Fargo and sets out on a journey to the American city in search of the briefcase full of cash Steve Buscemi buries in the snow in the Coen’s classic, which Kumiko for some reason believes to be a documentary of some sort. Rinko is charming as Kumiko, the certifiable sociopathic, unstoppable treasure hunter, and the film, while comedic, also explores mental instability in a meditative, eerie fashion.

On a much, much lighter note, Ping Pong Summer (above) by Michael Tully  is an entertaining time warp for anyone raised in the taste-deficient 80s-90s era of Nickelodeon, B-boys, ICEEs, and arcades. Set in 1985, the film follows young Rad Miracle (Marcello Conte) who, while on a family vacation at a beachside resort town, meets his best friend, the girl of his dreams, the biggest bully in the neighborhood, and a former ping pong legend (Susan Sarandon). Wave after wave of ’90s nostalgia washed over me throughout the film, and I found myself mouthing “wow” constantly at how authentically cheesy the props, costumes, and sets are. Perfect watching conditions: afternoon on a school day, eating Cinnamon Toast Crunch, wearing neon shorts and L.A. Gears.