Shot and set on Prince Edward Island in Canada, with an almost all-Canadian cast and crew, one gets the feeling this ponderous drama was also made largely for a local audience. Writer-director Adam Perry takes a classic moral-dilemma set-up – poor protagonist finds a substantial amount of seemingly abandoned cash and must decide whether to keep it or call the cops – and puts a distinctly Prince Edward Island spin on it. On one level, that means taking advantage of the pretty rural scenery, with its old-fashioned clapboard houses and miles of beach, as well as interesting local traditions such as harvesting Irish moss (actually not a moss but a variety of nutritious seaweed) that main character Kevin Doucette (Stephen Oates) collects like his ancestors did on the shore with horse and trap.
However, on another level, and despite the no-doubt generous funding from local film commissions, the setting prompts the characters to whinge a lot about how boring and hardscrabble life is on the island and how much they’d like to leave if only they could. The strong influence of Irish ancestry is audible in the accents themselves. So if you were just listening to the dialogue alone, you might think this was an Irish film like The Banshees of Inisherin, but without the absurdist humour, sparkling dialogue, inventive violence, miniature donkeys and cute dogs, or any strikingly talented personnel involved.
