Slouching Towards Oblivion: On "Drinking and Driving" by Avalon Fast & Jillian Frank

by Cole Martin for The 44 North, Contributing Writer - Politics

Drinking and Driving film poster

"Drinking and Driving adeptly conjures this pervasive but hard-to-articulate feeling—that of rocketing toward calamity while being utterly stagnant. Uncertainty hangs over every scene like a miasma, draping the azure British Columbian sky like wildfire smoke." 

Responding to a question about what makes their film feel so Canadian, Jillian Frank, one of the creators of 2026’s Drinking and Driving, said that she and co-creator Avalon Fast had tried to make the small British Columbia town they filmed in look “aesthetic,” but couldn’t. The houses, the lone convenience store, the shitty roads—none of it was romantic. However, their inability to portray a kitschy “Canadiana” is far from a demerit, and perhaps exactly what makes Drinking and Driving, in my mind, a refreshing, truthful film. 

Drinking and Driving is different fare than expected from Avalon Fast, who, alongside the aforementioned Jillian Frank, has built a reputation in indie cinema as a proponent of “Girl-horror,” a subgenre of horror with an express mission to reject the male gaze that is so dominant in the space. The result is films that feel genuinely subversive, not through cheap grotesquery and/or thin social critique, but through refusing to participate in the tired tropes and clichés that have defined the genre since its inception, leading to unique, genre-blending experiments.

Honeycomb (2022) film poster

Set in 2016, Drinking and Driving follows early-twenties duo Palmer and Iris as they spend a summer kissing one another at Palmer’s Grandma’s mobile home; loitering by the dragway; working at the diner; sunbathing at the swimming hole; binging alcohol and drugs at friends of friends’ house parties; oscillating between sexual and romantic partners; and, yes, participating in one of Canada’s infamous rural hobbies: Drinking and driving. Much to the film’s credit, it doesn’t pause to moralize about its characters’ various indiscretions; instead, it merely presents experiences, leaving the ruminating to the viewer, utterly nonplussed about what reproval one might muster. As spectators, we’re merely along for the ride, learning (or relearning) alongside Palmer and Iris a fundamental, paradoxical principle of life: That things never really change, but also will never be the same again. 

Though it lacks the ethereal witchiness of Camp (2026) or the bloody girlhood emancipations of their feature debut Honeycomb (2022), Fast and Frank’s latest is not without its horrors. Drinking and Driving eschews the overtly supernatural and morbid, opting instead to capture the sombre and the sublime which subsist in the everyday. Beauty and sadness linger silently in the scenes, hiding in dense, dark woods, squirrely, clandestine backroads, the twilight of a house party, the glow of a television, and the laughter of fast friends, only disturbing the characters when they dare to pay attention to them… Or when they’re tragically forced to.

Camp (2026) film poster

In Crash (1996), Canadian filmmaker and body-horror darling David Cronenberg (adapting the 1973 J.G. Ballard novel) critically examines the concept of a car crash, ultimately deploying it as a metaphor for society’s fetishization of technology and information, and their encroachment on the personal and psychological. The car crash is similarly symbolic in Drinking and Driving, but its reality remains speculative, shifting it from a concrete phenomenon to an eternal possibility; representing, perhaps, the number of ever-looming catastrophes younger generations have inherited and have been anticipating with no end in sight. Drinking and Driving adeptly conjures this pervasive but hard-to-articulate feeling—that of rocketing toward calamity while being utterly stagnant. Uncertainty hangs over every scene like a miasma, draping the azure British Columbian sky like wildfire smoke. 

To be a young person today is to be presented with any number of futures that feel as though they all inevitably point to the same end, like parallel lines converging just past the horizon, or a pair of cars on a collision course. I’m sure many young people can attest to feeling this way, like they’re too late to generate their own momentum, even though they have most of their life ahead of them. Such listlessness and dread bring to mind John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row, with Palmer, Iris, and friends functioning as a modern parallel of Mack and the Boys: Refusing a futile fight, they resolve to watch time pass by, endeavouring to enjoy themselves with the means available to them, no matter how harmful or destructive. 

“It’s all fine to say: ‘Time will heal everything, this too shall pass away. People will forget’ — and things like that when you are not involved, but when you are there is no passage of time, people do not forget, and you are in the middle of something that does not change.”

(John Steinbeck, Cannery Row)

And, akin to Cannery Row, Drinking and Driving yields little in the way of a true resolution. Though many finalities are depicted in the film—death of childhood and innocence; death of the possibility of professional and economic prosperity; death of loved ones; and, most importantly for Palmer and Iris, death of the self—none of it is explicitly sublimated into a greater purpose. Instead, through drugs, reckless sex and reckless driving, we witness these characters approach what they most desire and what, in the strange and disarming finale, they potentially receive: A merging, not of body and machine (as in the case of Crash), but of body and body, soul and soul. 

Crash (1996) film poster

If the characters in Drinking and Driving can be said to embody anything, it is the death drive: The desire, sometimes dormant, sometimes not, to accelerate towards a conclusion. To stop all the waiting… To reach the finality that only accompanies dissolution. Thankfully, however, the film is not entirely ignorant of its angst. Just when it threatens to verge into over-sentimentality or sneering edginess, it deftly pulls back with a charming musical montage, a thoughtful refrain, or a self-aware joke, almost as though the filmmakers are reassuring you that they, too, were anticipating the eye-roll. Teasing it. 

This self-assured attitude is true of the film in general—although undoubtedly a work of nostalgia, it never descends into unexamined deference (there is no “simpler” time being pointed to, only different kinds of complicated). As such, I find it hard to label it a coming-of-age film, because the characters never really step into a new age. Rather, their 2016 summer feels both eternal and terminal, a sort of west-coast purgatory. Though we as the audience know that a new age is incumbent with the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic in a few years, Palmer and Iris don’t need to: It probably won’t change a whole lot for them anyway. 

What elevates Drinking and Driving over other indie run-and-gun hangout movies (colloquially referred to as “mumblecore” films) is its stellar principal cast, effortlessly executed humour, and total lack of inhibition when taking big swings (the ending being chief among them). The film’s ability to express, through subtle, mundane imagery and sleepy, reticent interactions, the nihilism and seemingly inescapable stagnation that accompany modernity perhaps explains why many young people, regardless of nationality, are connecting with it. 

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Cole Martin is a writer from Atlantic Canada. He can be found on Bluesky @coleboy.bsky.social 

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The Distinction & Braiding of Grief, Loneliness, and Isolation in Friendships

A conversation between Rohit Doel & Senior Editor, Mikaela Brewer, for The 44 North

How are grief, isolation, and loneliness distinct but also braided together in friendships? And what do those distinctions/braiding look like specifically for disabled folks?

Photo by Hiroyuki Sen

Mikaela Brewer (MB): I’d love to start with how grief has shown up for you recently?

Rohit Doel (
RD): For me, it shows up in flashbacks when I'm on a walk. I was on one the other day in this place, and I saw this spot which looked like a character, Mikasa, from an anime series called “Attack on Titan.” It brings back great memories of spending time with my close friends, and going to that spot reminds me of them. I do miss and grieve those times. That memory is there—and whether it'll reappear or happen again, I have no idea—and it [brought] a sense of grieving the past. I think of my friends when I pass by the park where we used to play on the swings or go to the seaside. 

And then, sometimes when I’m looking at old text messages—especially from my [birth] mother who abandoned me—it brings out rough memories. In January, after watching a football match, I saw at least 10-15 missed private calls. I thought, “Who the heck is calling me at this time?” 
And it was her. She [spoke] in such an aggressive tone that it stunted me and brought me to tears. It was brutal. 

Certain video games also bring up grief, especially The Last of Us, which I played with two friends—one of whom passed away. It’s interesting because they’re good memories from when we played together, but they have side effects. She’s no longer there, and that’s a memory, too. We’ll get to a location or a task in the game that she was with us for, and it’s like reliving her absence. Those hurts stick. 

Wishing someone was still here when they’re not anymore affects you in strange ways, even if they’re still alive. My mom’s side of the family decided they didn’t want to talk to me again, and I don’t know why. It blew up as I tried to get in contact with them. Respecting a decision that isn’t yours is grief, too.

At the same time, I wonder, “What if?” What if it could be different? What if it wasn’t like this? Grief makes you look at memories, but it also makes you question them. 
When I go through grief, it’s a lot of reflecting and questioning, which can be a lot and quickly become a bit too much. It can stunt you and freeze you. Others might say to “Get over it,” but I generally think that grief isn’t something you get over—you get used to it over time. It'll stick with you regardless.

MB: Yes. In my own experience, [grief is] definitely something I've learned to carry. Maybe it takes a different shape or feels less sharp over time. But you're right: It will pop up in very simple moments. You’ll have a nice memory of someone, but there’s also the hole that they're not filling—that’s what hurts. And that can feel so isolating and lonely because there’s some truth in that feeling: Only we can feel the absence of somebody in the way that we had a relationship with them. At the same time, maybe we feel more ease about navigating grief when we’re in community. So I’m wondering if you’d like to talk about that too: Does grief feel isolating or lonely to you? And what barriers to community are there?

RD: You know, I’m very much on my own and in my own flat most of the time. The main thing that keeps me going is my two close friends; I’ve strengthened my relationship with them. 
But also the fact that I've met a few friends on Discord channels. I want to be honest: In real life, making a community or building any sort of friendship is very, very difficult. College was rough—I made one or two friends, but over time, they became distant. 
At this age, making friends is tricky, and for me, most of the time, I have one or two friends in real life and the rest online. We’re all close with each other in a unique way. My only wish is to live closer to them—it would make things much easier. 

I think about my community as safe people because they're quite secure. I can be whoever I want to be around them. 
It's a nice, relaxing place to be where you're not going to be questioned or judged. If I find it, I find community and solace through the people I’ve met on Discord, the people on PlayStation, and sometimes through you. I don't know why I'm giggling now—I think it's just my way of coping with that fact. 
How is it for you?

Via the Smithsonian

MB: Well, one thing I love that you mentioned is mending relationships—and I know it was a tumultuous time when things were unravelling. 
But if part of community is safety, part of safety is conflict and how you remain a safe person for others and for yourself through it. I’ve been thinking about that a lot in my relationships. In what ways do we navigate disagreement, conflict, and the ways we’re hurt by the world in the context of grieving? Five or six people in my life have died since December 2025, which is a lot. Two of them I was quite close with. And what I've noticed in these past few months is that when I'm angry or when I don’t feel like my best self. I’m trying to ask: How do I maintain relationships with people or talk to them in that case? Or how can they be more patient/understanding? In terms of navigating grief, these elements are less “romanticized.” It’s a messy process, like you said. So often, when we're grieving, especially with other people, we’re angry or don't show up the way we'd like to. 

RD: I agree. With grief, there are weird things that happen to your psyche. I feel happy one day, and another time soon after, I don’t know what the hell is going on. You fall out of control, not necessarily in a bad way, but in a way that you can't really question.

One thing I’ve learned about grief is that there’s no end point. 
I’m thinking about Stranger Things, particularly the final episode where 
Hopper is talking to Mike about Eleven’s death. It stuck with me. 
Hopper says something like: “You have two roads ahead of you. There’s one road where you can replay everything that happened, kick yourself, and keep blaming yourself. Or, there's the second road where you can accept what's happened even though you don't agree with it or like what happened. You can accept her decision, and you can accept that it wasn't your fault.” 
He doesn’t say to move on from it, which I liked. The grief will always stick with you, but at least there can be peace. 

That scene hasn’t left me because there are things in my life that I wish had happened. I wish that 
I had most of my family with me, but I don’t. And sometimes I wonder, question, and reflect. I say, “Why, how?” Eventually I did accept what happened, even though I don't like the resolution. And sometimes that's what brings me a bit of comfort and peace. 
Grief doesn’t always offer closure. It annoys me when people can but don’t give closure. That might be one of the worst things you can do as a human being. 
Maybe some situations don’t deserve it, but I think we should consider closure because there’s a whole other person on the other end. We’re not AI or robots.

Ultimately, there's peace in that sense of accepting loss, but surrounding yourself with people you love remains the main thing. I really do miss people, in a lot of ways, all the time. Even with my close friends, soon after I hang up a call, I immediately miss them a lot. I don't know why, even though I know they’re just going to bed. I can’t get rid of the racing feeling of waiting for them to come online again. I quite literally tell myself: “What's going on? Whoa, slow down. 
We're going to meet again.”

Via the Cleveland Museum of Art

MB: I feel that too, truthfully. And I wonder if it’s connected to how isolated and lonely we are in so many other parts of our lives. 
We're all craving that sort of connection, built into our day. Does that make sense? 

RD: Yes, and the funny thing is, I do think our humanity, as we know it, has become more robotic in a way. 
Two weeks ago, I deleted my Twitter account because it felt too robotic. There are too many bots. The generative interaction that once existed is completely dead and feels over. But I do feel like a lot of this is tied to how much we work—the pure amount of time that people are working. It’s 40-, 50-, 60-hour work weeks with limited breaks. Socializing and interacting with people [outside of work] is a must, really. And sometimes, I do feel afraid of a future where I'm too isolated. And look, I don't mind spending time on my own, but sometimes not all the time. It's uncomfortable for a reason. That's why I spend time with people even as background noise, just so I know someone's there.

MB: Yeah. I wonder if we’re actually, in fact, grieving that absence of connection, without identifying it as such. 
It's grief. You're right: So many of our relationships are work-related, which have this particular performance attached to them. 
You perform in your job; you're not your most authentic self (as much as you can try to be). It's still “professional” in the sense that 
you're not as able to be as fully yourself as you might be with friends or family. So maybe we grieve that—the absence of that. And maybe that’s what we feel after we spend time with people. 
We feel a strange kind of hangover. 

RD: Yeah, it’s a weird aftereffect, but so important to recognize.

MB: I’m grateful we're talking about it because I've never thought of it that way. You just opened my brain like the math meme. Thank you for this.

RD: Of course. Thank you. I enjoyed speaking with you!

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Rohit Doel

Rohit is a poet & disability justice activist. Connect with him on Instagram here.

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“Be a villager…just for your people”: Why friendship isn’t the antidote to young people’s loneliness

by Grace Dada for The 44 North, Contributing Writer - Politics

Via Bumble BFF

The loneliness crisis needs new messaging.

“Be a villager.”

“Find your people.”

“Be a girl’s girl.”

“The price of community is inconvenience.”

This kind of incisive discourse has permeated the public sphere and digital landscape since the pandemic. Initially, like many of my peers, I lapped it up eagerly, adopted each new phrase and the sentiments behind it, and embraced apps for friendship and weekly dinners. They delivered on their promise to introduce me to friendly faces and proved to be solid options for moving to a different city or entering a new life stage: University, postgraduate, and working life.

Several years later, connection discourse has become debate fodder for social media platforms, fuelling short-form video content and best-selling books alike. Friendship experts like Danielle Bayard Jackson, for example, have amassed audiences of hundreds of thousands on TikTok and Instagram with tips to help break down the skills and complexities of building and sustaining friendships.

That this kind of content resonates is no surprise. It offers a welcome oasis from the hamster wheel-adjacent society many young people feel they’ve been unwillingly ushered into. It also marks a shift from the clear-cut, vertical path for happiness—which was perhaps once more strictly defined by academic prowess, upward career trajectories and nuclear families—and refocuses attention laterally, towards those within our inner circles.

With today’s housing prices skyrocketing (mortgage payments in Toronto are up 56 percent since 2014, according to Fraser Institute) and wages remaining stagnant, young Canadians may never be able to afford their own houses. Potentially locked out of traditional markers of success, setting their sights on the relationships around them is one way to rearrange the texture of their lives and reclaim agency. 

But these days, friendship-centred discourse is more likely to earn a suspicious eye from me than an eager buy-in. 

I’ve grown dubious of the overly neat packaging it often arrives in, the way that it doesn’t quite seem to answer all the questions it promises to. Friendship alone cannot mend young Canadians’ deep, infrastructure-sized loneliness, and proposing as much is the equivalent of the flimsy, cherry-coloured ribbons we ripped through on Christmas Day as children.

When it comes to loneliness and its far-reaching harms, the data is clear. The human body can endure situational hardships; social disconnectedness doesn’t appear to be one of them. Its effect parallels smoking 15 cigarettes a day, according to a 2023 US Surgeon General Advisory report, and it increases the risk of depression and heart attack.

A 2024 Stats Canada survey reported that young Canadians are lonelier than older generations, with nearly one in five (17%) aged 15-24 admitting they always or often feel lonely. Yet in the same report, 82% of that age group reported that they always or often had people to count on. Paradoxically, this suggests that the high-support role of a solid inner circle of friends and family is already being filled for a significant portion of youth.

Where like-minded, shared interest groups fall short

Heard from social media, the solution to young people’s loneliness is simply stronger friendships and like-minded social interest groups. However, trends show young people are already joining sports and hobby groups, and at higher rates than pre-pandemic times.

2023 research from the Canadian Leisure & Reading Study found the percentage of online and in-person book club attendees rose from 13% in 2020 to 22% in 2023. The subsequent 2024 report showed it sitting around 34%, and adults aged 18 to 29 were the most likely to attend reading groups.

Yet, the data still shows a lonely day-to-day reality for many young Canadians. A 2025 YMCA survey showed three out of four (~74%) of young Canadians aged 18-34 say they don’t have a sense of community, and the same demographic of people believe a decline in “third spaces” is to blame. Those in the later half of their youth seem to face the worst of it, as 77% of those between 26-34 report a lack of sense of community.

As someone for whom reading groups, sports clubs, and music events have technically “worked”—as in, they’ve placed me in the same rooms as the people who have since become my dearest friends today—I’ve found there are still chasms even the bosomest of buddies cannot bridge. Our friends know, love, and understand us well. But they can’t quite scratch the itch of partaking in a wider group where your presence alone entitles you to care and support. This is a key difference between friendship and community.

I didn’t have the words to explain it at the time, but this is what I cherished so much about my early school days and the classroom environment, which slotted me into a community that felt greater than myself and my inner circle. Whether I “belonged” enough to receive the same education as my peers didn’t depend on what interests I shared or whether I was well-suited to everyone in the room. It came with enrollment. 

School's reliable, somewhat indiscriminate social infrastructure mirrors what one commenter on Tashawn Dragovan’s Instagram describes below—a community built only on shared spaces, interests and identities and community meant as committed care. I’m convinced that proposing the former (finding compatible people) as a fix for loneliness caused by the latter (developing a wider supportive and structured network) only keeps the wheel spinning in the wrong direction. 

Via Tashawn Dragovan's Instagram Post

Fighting young Canadians’ loneliness starts well before the hobby group or friendship forms; it should already be baked into the architecture of Canadian society. The groundwork for true community is commitment, where members’ perceived similarities aren’t the benchmark for belonging, and needs, values, and differences don’t exempt them from the right support and consideration. Simply participating is enough.

This type of care structure once came easily in religious spaces and between next-door neighbours, for example, and now takes work and intention to create. Mutual aid networks—peer-to-peer communities that exchange and share resources, and allow participants to disclose vulnerabilities, strengths, and receive support outside of a capitalist system—are a close comparison. But without the same daily or weekly care structure, they still may not quite bridge the gap.

Loneliness-washing: The newest marketing angle

In April 2026, an Inc. Magazine article by Stephanie Cartin declared community as the future of marketing. Her rationale is that it helps brands take ownership of consumer relationships. Let the profit generate itself.

Apps like Bumble BFF and Hinge also have subscription costs and paywalls for their premium products. Newer competitors like TimeLeft and RealRoots offer monthly memberships, with the latter charging hundreds of dollars for several “facilitated” in-person meetups behind their “Make New Friends Guaranteed!” slogan. 

What money-hungry multinational corporations have observed is that the promise of connection makes for a compelling product, which you can turn around and sell to lonely people, gatekeeping what was once and should remain widely accessible. 

For brands, they can strengthen their staying power by moving their followings offline and avoiding the game of maintaining digital audiences altogether. Consumers, on the other hand, get…connection sold back to them with interest.

Once again, young people are watching a movement, initially intended to centre and unify them, co-opted for profitable gain and used as a business model. 

Be a villager for your favourite people.

The good news is that developing the kind of robust social framework needed to ease young people’s loneliness is possible, even without overpriced social clubs or membership-tiered friendship apps. It starts smaller, with a reprioritization of Stanford sociologist Mark S. Granovetter’s weak ties, or the friendly, familiar faces with one step in and one step out of our world. This includes hairdressers, baristas, next-door neighbours, and acquaintances—people with whom we interact consistently, but not necessarily deeply. 

Granovetter’s research finds that prioritizing weak ties impacts several spheres of your life, even increasing one’s career odds. Alongside weak ties, intentional moves towards interacting with strangers, which is something younger generations may be less likely to do, can also help abate the loneliness crisis.

Pete Bombaci, founder of The GenWell Project, an organization that researches and advocates for Canadians’ social health, says, “For decades, we have been told not to talk to strangers, and for young kids that’s some safe advice. As we get older and a little more worldly, though, the positive effects of connecting with those we don’t know can be pretty powerful—both for you and the person you’re talking to.” The organization conducted a national survey in partnership with the University of Victoria and discovered that Canadians who greeted strangers were three times more likely to be happy than those who did not.

When we advise young people to be better villagers, there’s an additional unspoken message that keeps the sense of responsibility and commitment safely confined to the individual’s close inner circle. There is less room for/or accountability to strangers. That’s what led Canadian TikTok content creator Michelle Skidelsky to post a video saying, “I am horrified by the amount of people who genuinely think they don’t owe anyone anything,” speaking to the decline in general politeness and decorum she perceived.

Online life largely suggests that younger generations may be underestimating their first line of defence against loneliness—connecting with and showing up for strangers, and remembering how we’re all in relationship with and to one another. Including those we’re not close to. 

As a child, I remember puzzling at the way my Nigerian father raved about conversations with helpful cashiers and delivery drivers, or kind deeds from a neighbour more often than even his closest friends. Years later, I see his argument: Connection is a currency worth exchanging every single time it’s offered, regardless of depth.

The dental assistant, grocer, and transport driver may not be the same people we’ll be sharing our deepest, darkest woes or celebrating our brightest days with, but they don’t have to be. They’re still on the other side of the table, holding up their end and comprising the backdrop of the cities and neighbourhoods we call home. And we must not forget: We are these people to someone else, too.

In Granovetter and The GenWell Project’s research, we find an invitation to expand our concept of the village. Be a villager for your friends and your family and your children, yes. 

But what about everyone else?  

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Grace Dada is a writer and editor from Western Canada. She's written across fintech, wellness, and independent media, and previously founded Sorella Magazine, a digital media company for and by Black women. Her work has been published in outlets like ByBlacks.com, Shape and The Financial Diet. She holds an HBA in English and Writing & Rhetoric from the U of T. Connect with her on Instagram.

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