Actor Sean Whalen (who I’ll always remember as Roach from The People Under the Stairs) makes his feature film directorial debut with this indie project titled Crust, which just landed in limited theaters recently. The movie is an odd little comedy-fantasy about a depressed has-been-child-star-turned-laundromat-owner named Vegas (played by Sean Whalen) that finds a new lease on life when a large pile of socks somehow comes to life and violently takes out anyone who has done poor ol’ Vegas wrong.

Shot in black and white, the movie seemed partially inspired by other indie comedies like Kevin Smith’s Clerks, which aside from also being shot in black and white, primarily focused on a bunch of different characters in a small convenience store. In this case, it’s a rundown laundromat and with weaker writing and far less interesting characters.

Clocking in at 100-minutes, the movie would’ve benefited from a good 20-minutes being trimmed, as there are many scenes that either felt filler or simply too dialogue-heavy, which I wouldn’t normally mind, but when the movie mainly consists of characters talking and the occasional weird death via sock-monster, the pacing takes a huge hit. I mean, did we really need a sequence involving Vegas casually dancing along to some music with the sock-monster?

Speaking of the sock-monster, if you’re seeing the movie specifically for that you’ll be sorely disappointed, because the monster is essentially just a background character that only shows up when necessary (aside from the moments where Vegas talks to it like it’s his BFF). The movie is more about Vegas and his life in the laundromat, along with the people that never seem to leave the laundromat. And when it’s time for the monster to kill, don’t expect blood or anything graphic. The deaths are very PG, in my opinion, even in one particular scene that insinuates the sock going up someone’s butt and out of their mouth. Trust me when I say it sounds a lot more graphic than it actually is.

While the movie might not’ve been funny to me, it did have quite a few amusing moments and with comedy being subjective, I won’t fault it for not making me laugh. In fact, it at least kept my interest for the most part, unlike a lot of other films I come across nowadays and being a dialogue-heavy movie, it could’ve been a whole lot worse.