Review: Sk+te'kmujue'katik (In the Place of Ghosts)
L’nu (Mik’maw) filmmaker Bretten Hannam confronts the spiritual scars we carry in haunting new film
Sk+te'kmujue'katik (In the Place of Ghosts) is L’nu (Mik’maw) filmmaker Bretten Hannam’s new supernatural thriller, 11 years in the making, his follow-up to his critically acclaimed 2021 film Wildwood (Crave).
At a spare 87-minute runtime, Hannam wastes no frame in telling the story of brothers Mise’l, played by Blake Alec Miranda, and Antle, portrayed by Forrest Goodluck (The Revenant, Indian Horse), a pair of young men who have been absent from each other’s lives for about a decade after experiencing a traumatic, horrifying experience as children.
Mise’l is openly gay and living with his partner in the city, and Antle is a single dad and fire fighter living in their home community.
Sk+te'kmujue'katik (pronounced Ske-goo-je-mooch, I think) opens with Mise’l cleaning up late one night in the restaurant kitchen where he works, when the jukebox starts playing a haunting old song that makes him visibly tense.
He tentatively walks into the darkened restaurant and sees a figure in familiar clothes hunched over a table.
But it’s not a person, it's a malevolent ghost and it leaves a physical mark on Mise’l’s skin. That sends him home where a reluctant Antle agrees to join him on the journey back to the place of their worst childhood horror – a cave deep in the old growth forest of Mi’kmaki (Nova Scotia), marked by ancient petroglyphs.
Their journey begins as Mise’l turns down an old rutted, logging road hemmed in by a forest of spruce, fir, and birch.
It is a familiar landscape for anyone who has lived in logging country; the immensity of the forest, punctuated by human industry.
The brothers journey by canoe and on foot, encountering ghosts from the past and future, some helpful, others not, but all weighted by the emotional burden Mise’l and Antle carry.
While Sk+te'kmujue'katik’s story arc follows the familiar beats of the classic thriller genre, passing through fear, confrontation and catharsis, the ghosts and the stories they tell reflect the circular and interconnectedness of Indigenous storytelling.
This is a story that is at once very specific and universal, confronting themes of child abuse and trauma with a deft emotional touch that points to Hannan’s strength as an empathetic and clear-eyed storyteller.
Sk+te'kmujue'katik is anchored by strong performances by its two leads. Blake Alec Miranda in his first major screen role as older brother Mise’l holds the audience’s attention with a quiet stillness that barely masks his loneliness and heartbreak.
Forrest Goodluck, as younger brother Antle, carries his rage and fear just beneath the surface of his skin delivering a tightly coiled performance that gives the film its brotherly tension.
Supporting the actors and the cinematography, which brings the Mik’maki forest alive, is a score written and performed by Wolastoqiyik composer Jeremy Dutcher. His familiar, plaintive tenor lifts the story, carrying us, Mise’l and Antle further into the dark with a grace and spirituality that deepens the story and the import of the brothers’ journey.
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Sk+te'kmujue'katik (In the Place of Ghosts) had its world premiere at TIFF on September 6, 2025 and was the opening night gala at the Atlantic Film Festival in Halifax on September 10, 2025. A theatrical or streaming release date has not yet been set by Canadian distributor VVS Films.
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