Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Such a frustrating disappointment

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Director/write Jeff Barnaby just kills it in his first feature length movie. Set on a Canadian reservation in the 70s the film follows Aila (Devery Jacobs who is astonishing). After a tragic accident involving her little brother Aila is left essentially parentless. By the time she's 15 she's dealing drugs, though she wears as gas mask to ensure she doesn't get high while she deals. The weed also serves another purpose; to keep from being carted off to a residential school run by priests where abuse is high, Aila pays a fee so that the white cops will ignore her presence. The movie follows many twists and turns but eventually turns into a heist film. But what a great one it is! The performances are all great but Devery Jacobs turns out to be the real find of the movie. She is astonishing as Aila, a small kid who has been almost completely hardened after being left to fend for herself. The cinematography by Michel St. Martin is a stunner. Not to spoil anything but there is a fight scene on the beach that is equal parts beauty and gore. Do yourself a favour and watch this film.

A good film where Mi'kmaq is spoken in it. However this delves into the horrors and abuses Native kids were forced to endure at the residential schools (aka death camps). This film depicted a more radical form of the abuse those poor kids had to go through. I guess it seemed more radical to me since the music that accompanied the film made it appear that way. But nonetheless this one showed the abuses the kids went through similar to some other Native films depict.The scene at the beach where Glen Gould's character and her daughter were kidnapped and taken hostage by the residential school staff, the Indian Agent and RCMP: although it was a film, I was still disgusted at how they all took turns in beating him and his daughter up like that! The daughter was not under 18 so she should not have been sent away to the damn school. As for her father, it was insane how they took him, tied him up to a chair and beat him mercilessly literally for nothing! At the beach they told him he "wasn't supposed to go out onto the water". I don't know WHY he wasn't supposed to do that but they "charged" him for doing that.Anyways... I give this film an 8 out of 10.

I've always been a fan of stories about Native American life. Doesn't mean all the stories I read or watch end up being good.This is a good one. Also, as a citizen of the USA, it is a little odd to watch one regarding abuse and racism against Indians by the British via "Queen's Laws" in Canada instead of the USA, since most of the western world prefers to pretend only whites in the USA abused minorities.But beyond a reminder of just how recently people were torturing and destroying the lives of a darker skinned people, this story goes into the family relationships and survival techniques in a world which offered few options for those things which keep us human.

It has a flaw or two, but this debut feature from Native Canadian Jeff Barnaby is very, very good. Think "Mean Streets" meets "Dance Me Outside" with a little bit of magic realism sprinkled in, and you'll get a sense of how this film works. It's probably the best First Nations film I've seen since "Smoke Signals," back in 1998."Rhymes for Young Ghouls" follows the story of Aila, a parent-less teenage girl living on a Mi'kmaq reservation in Canada during the 1970s. To help make ends meet, she sells marijuana with her uncle to the local pot smokers on the reserve. This draws the attention of Popper, a sociopathic federal Native Agent who takes much pleasure in tormenting and beating Mi'kmaq people like Aila and her friends. Nobody can sell marijuana on the reserve unless Popper gets his cut of the profits.Much of the film plays like a dark visual poem, and the imagery and cinematography are very strong. Barnaby lifts some of his imagery and ideas from Mi'kmaq culture, pop culture, horror movies, and what is probably personal experience from growing up on a reservation himself."Rhymes for Young Ghouls" gets a big thumbs up from me. This is an impressive debut feature film, and I look forward to seeing Mr. Barnaby's future projects.