Night Raiders

The feminist and culturally specific Indigenous focal point in writer and director Danis Goulet's feature debut is admirable, but is muddled, dull and falls short in her attempt to intertwine a dystopian apocalyptic sci-fi story within it.

It started off really interesting and engaging as a apocalyptic sci-fi, but then once the cultural aspect became evident, I quickly lost interest and got bored, right up to the last 5 minutes of the ending. The 101 min runtime felt much longer with the slow pacing. The cinematography was excellent, the directing decent, and the performances quite good. It's a 6/10 from me.

A beautiful, bold modern allegory of the very real residential schools set in a dystopian, not-unimaginable future. A wonderful cast and tight editing. Indigenous people and language and relationships refuse to cede to the State. 💪

This not the worst movie I've seen. So anyone throwing a 1 or a 2 at it is likely taking themselves a little too seriously. Likewise, it is not great or maybe even good so anyone throwing a 6 or more is invested in the movie's success or else just tolerates mediocre much better than I do.

This is not a lot of action. Not a lot of thriller. And the only real sci-fi does not make a lot of sense. You will likely have a hard time actually caring about the characters and an even harder time remaining interested in the outcome. And then when it happens you'll wish it hadn't because you will realize your investment in the payoff didn't earn much.

Other than that though, excellent movie. Watch it yourself if you don't believe me.

Yes, I know this film is a bit lo-fi, yet the acting leads are superb, the story a bit too believable--especially in terms of recently uncovered nightmares of Indian schools, and the malicious tech right on target. Was there a bit too much left from he editing room intact: YES. But some of these actors probably worked their whole lives to get into a wide-distribution release. I appreciated the film on many levels and would hope other viewers would as well.

Night Raiders starts promising with an intriguing plot but towards the second part of the movie the quality is just tumbling down. It looks like towards the end the writers had a lack of imagination, or were just too lazy to give it a better outcome. So overal I was entertained for a bit more than half of the movie, after that I got bored. The acting is average, some were better than others. Nothing award winning that's for sure. It's too bad because Night Raiders definitely could have been better, the ingredients were there but the execution failed.