Blackbird

This low budget film stars Connor Jessup as Sean, a bright but lonely teenanger who dresses in Goth clothing. He makes the mistake of taking an interest in another schoolmate's - a jock - girlfriend. This leads to a confrontation which leads to Sean making an online threat. The police come to his house and find some disturbing material and some of his father's hunting rifles unsecured.

This leads to a misunderstanding of Sean's intentions - authorities assume the worst and Sean and his father deal with the fallout.

This is a good characther study of a teenager who is forced to re-evluate his life as it goes thru an upheaval due to changed circumstances. The film is uniformly well acted and well paced. One feels symapthy for Sean despite even as we see him make mistakes. The film leaves off with many issues not resolved, which is good in this case as we know life is never simple.

I was unable to guess what route this film was going to take, it could have gone several routes but the one it chose was thought provoking, intelligent and beautifully pitched. The acting was first class, I'd only really seen Connor Jessup in Falling Skies - which I do like - and was pleased to see a very fine performance here. Michael Buie was superb as his dad and all other cast members were strong and believable. At times there was the chance for the movie to fall into a cliché but it managed to avoid that every time with some aplomb. In short, this is a fine film that I would highly recommend. I note that this is the writer/directors first feature, I very much look forward to his next project.

A well-produced, well-acted movie about a would-be perp who redeems himself, and a community that goes way overboard.

I watched this movie only because it had Connor Jessup, who I have followed since Falling Skies. For the most part, I really loved this movie. The acting was great, the story was powerful, and the main characters were anything but one-dimensional. The one thing that made it hard for me to love the movie was the "ending". I put it in quotes because the movie didn't really end, it just stopped. While I don't need to have a feel-good, neatly wrapped ending, I do think a movie needs an ending with some finality, even if it is an ending to that part of the story before the next part starts.

Other than the ending, I really did love the movie. It was powerful, emotional, and not always comfortable to watch. But it was (excluding the ending) worth it.

This film did a excellent job showing how social media and status has turned are world upside down.