Remembering The Work of Anton Yelchin

Anton Yelchin’s face fills the very first frame of Alpha Dog, but at the time no one noticed. The painfully underrated 2006 film follows a neighborhood of boys — some still kids, some pretending, fatally, to be men — as they reluctantly, almost accidentally, decide to murder a 15-year-old stranger. Yelchin, who died in a car accident this weekend, plays that doomed teen, and though he’d been acting continually since he was 11, he was still a stranger to audiences, too. But by the time Alpha Dog ends, he’s unforgettable. Rewatch the opening credits, a collage of real-life VHS home videos, and you’ll spot him right away.