High-school hockey rinks are places built on ritual, camaraderie, and code. In Destroyer, Funk turns that world upside-down with the story of Tyson, a junior player whose world fractures after witnessing something that cannot be unsaid. It’s 11 minutes of cold air, echoing footsteps, and the way silence becomes louder than words.
The film opens inside that locker-room buzz—the late jerseys, the taps of tape on sticks, good-luck claps. But almost immediately something shifts. Tyson sees his teammates commit an act of violence, and what followed the shot echoes longer than the period buzzer. Funk doesn’t give us a triumphant comeback. He gives us a bruise. That’s the shock: the film isn’t about scoring goals, it’s about failing to speak up.
Visually, the style is tight and almost documentary-real. Close-ups of taped fingers, boards splintering, coats zipped by hands that want to shake. Cinematographer Benjamin Loeb sticks with Tyson—breathing close when the locker door slams shut, pulling back when the crowd’s cheers fade. Funk uses his short time well: each shot weighs in, each silence presses. There’s no soundtrack push; instead we hear the thump of skates, the swoosh of the rink’s ventilation, the emptiness of a hallway after the game has left.
What stands out is how the film tackles guilt wrapped in the armour of masculinity. Tyson isn’t the villain and he’s not the hero; he’s the kid whose loyalty battles his conscience. Funk’s approach mirrors that — not a big moral speech but a slow collapse. Not a doctor’s office scene but a stick dropping in the snow and nobody picking it up. As one review put it, the brilliance is in the subtlety—Funk doesn’t spell it out, and that’s what makes your own brain fill in the blanks.
For indie filmmakers, there’s a lesson here: you don’t need a bomb set piece to hit hard. You need truth. Funk layers metaphor without stepping away. The locker-room becomes battleground, the puck becomes weight. We see the team win—but the real loss is PTSD, complicity, and quiet erosion.
If you’ve got twelve minutes or so, watch Destroyer. Then stand still for a moment and hear the echo of shoes leaving the ice. Because sometimes the smallest crack in the rink tells us the biggest story.
