Jamie (Taylor Olson) works a wood processor, clear-cutting for pulp in small-town Nova Scotia. At the end of each shift, he walks through the destruction he has created looking for injured animals and rescues those he can. Adapted from a play by Nova Scotian author Catherine Banks, Bone Cage is an impressive first feature from Halifax actor/filmmaker Taylor Olson that sensitively excavates the tragedy of how young people in rural communities, employed in the destruction of their environment, treat the people they love at the end of their shift.
In 1947 Whitbourne, Newfoundland, Alan Hepditch, a by-the-books but squeamish and somewhat dimwitted criminologist is constantly being tormented by his fellow ranger candidates and his sergeant, Bill O'Mara. Before Hepditch can quit, O'Mara, as a sort of punishment, assigns him to his first posting at Swyer's Harbour, where five sheep mutilations have taken place over the past year. When he arrives in Swyer's Harbour, Hepditch has a more serious crime to investigate, that of the murder of a local, mentally slow woman named Tryphenia Maud Pottle, better known to the locals as Young Triffie.