West Michigan

A pair of filmmaking siblings make a cinematic love letter to their home state, playing a sister and brother on a journey to inner discovery.

“West Michigan” truly is a cinematic love letter to its eponymous state by sibling filmmakers Riley and Chloe Ray Warmoth, who hail from there. It’s filled with absolutely stunning footage of the area in and around Grand Haven, as the two play a fictional brother and sister on a road trip to inner discovery.

You don’t tend to see cinematography this good in a low-budget film, but Sam Negen combines beautiful vistas with aerial shots that leave you gasping for breath. The state’s tourist bureau should be trumpeting this movie far and wide.

The human story is small and intimate, really just about two people with a handful of others gliding in and out of the story. Riley plays Charlie, a college senior of 22, while his sister Hannah (Chloe Ray) is about to graduate from high school and embark on a similar journey. The reason for their trip is that their grandfather is ailing in the hospital, and things aren’t looking good.

Chloe Ray brings a sense of warmth and authenticity to Hannah, who puts out cool-girl vibes on the outside but is a bundle of anxiety inside. She’s recently broken up with her boyfriend, Tyler (Isaac James Thornsen), and he’s harassing her on the phone. There’s a deeper sense of feeling unmoored, about to set off on a journey into the future that is dark to her.

The relationship with her brother is typical of middle-class kids: somewhat distant but heartfelt, a wave of digs and insults acting as the de facto communication method. Holed up in a car for a few hours, Hannah tries to get Charlie to show genuine interest in her fears and foibles, but he feels like he’s intruding on her space by not just accepting her stock answers that she’s fine.

Their car breaks down in a nowhere town, and they decide to camp and hike while waiting for it to be fixed by the strangely hostile mechanic (Justin Mane). Something serious happens to separate the two -- I won’t say what -- but for a time Hannah finds herself hanging out with a trio of kids about her age (Sydney Agudong, Seth Lee and Berkley Bragg) who mistake her for a nomad.

She enjoys basking in the attention, the freedom from family pressures and the interest of the boy of the group, who has floppy hair but similarly bendy attitudes toward relationships that remind her too much of her ex.

Riley also wrote and directed the film, and he’s got a good sense of how young people really talk to each other -- and how they don’t, expecting others to fill in the unspoken stream of communication flowing from the heart. Some of his camera set-ups and angles are a bit amateurish for dialogue scenes, which is not unexpected for his first feature film.

At just 76 minutes long, “West Michigan” is a nice start to a movie that feels like it’s missing a third act, whether it’s at the end of what we see, in the middle or before the start. I wanted to dive deeper into what makes Hannah tick, how she arrived at her quiet despair and what the next steps for her will be. Charlie is largely resigned to acting as her foil, rather than being a fully-fleshed character in of himself.

Still, if you’re looking for a bright, sunny stroll through the Great Lakes State but with a dollop of pathos, this movie won’t steer you wrong.