Movie review: Hellion

City Paper grade: B-

There’s not much wrong with Kat Candler’s Hellion, the story of a father (Aaron Paul) and son (Josh Wiggins) trying to weather the death of their wife and mother. There’s also not nearly enough right. It’s sensitive, all right, with nuanced turns by Paul, whose struggle with self-meditation is just different enough from Jesse Pinkman to show range without seeming desperate, and especially Wiggins, whose sullen bearing hints at the pain underneath his trouble-making exterior. And Candler, a first-time feature director, shoots with a sharp eye and the understated naturalism that’s become common currency at Sundance, where Hellion launched and was nurtured. It adds up to a serviceable but resolutely unremarkable vision of childhood and loss, one that had the profound misfortune to open catercorner to Richard Linklater’s Boyhood. There are a few distinctive moments, like one where Wiggins binges on whipped cream and pogos on a couch cushion while blasting Metallica, a reminder that he’s still a kid underneath the facade of adult stoicism. But they’re too far apart and they don’t connect to each other, as if Candler lucked into the good stuff rather than building on it.