I just watched "The Descendant" on the opening night in Montreal. I have very mixed feelings about this film. The cinematography in this film isn't bad, although it suffers from being shot on video. The story is unusual and kept me interested until the tasteless twist at the end (more about that later). The film has a unique flavor to it. The setting & the props are very effective in creating a certain mood and the set designer has paid lots of attention to detail. Unfortunately, there are other aspects of the movie that are not equally impressing. The acting is overall terrible (the middle-aged lady in the bar and the bartender are the 2 exceptions). All actors play on different levels: from extreme overacting (the evil old man) to extreme under-acting (the young main character). This inconsistency leads to the fact that none of the characters seem believable The editing is terrible, sometimes it's so confused that scenes that are meant to be realistic appear as psychedelic dream scenes. There are many superfluous "horror" montages/flashes that have little to do with the story and just distracts the viewer. The continuity is awful too, the script girl must have been out of coffee during the shoot if they even had one. There are especially many mistakes where the characters seem to look beside each other instead of at each other, due to badly matched camera angles. There are many details in the storyline that are confusing. Why is the main character so keen on walking around in the corn fields, when each time he does so he gets caught by bear traps? Why doesn't the old couple react at all when the guy brings out their music box to the garden and starts playing loud music in the middle of the night? I like the fact that this film avoids unnecessary gore, but sometimes it just becomes a little bit too child friendly. In one scene a woman and her dog are being ambushed by 4 villains in the woods. The villains surround her, carrying big knives and baseball bats. The camera turns away, we hear the woman scream and the dog cry, and we are certain that they are meeting a horrific death. But a few scenes later they reappear. The lady's' hairdo is a bit messed up and the dog has a band aid on the knee, apart from that they seem to be healthy & happy! <br /><br />Despite, or maybe because of all this, I actually found the movie very charming and quite intriguing. Until the end, where the film all of a sudden brings up a new theme: it comments on the Canadian history of slavery and the inhuman treatment of black slaves at "Nigger Rock". This is a dark and until recently hidden part of Canadian history. Of course this is a very important subject to bring up, but not in the context of this kind of a horror movie. It's just not the right forum for discussing such a serious topic that involves so much real human suffering.