Sleeping Giant is a 2015 Canadian drama film written and directed by Andrew Cividino. The film follows three teenage boys coping with boredom in cottage country on the shores of Lake Superior.
Teenage Adam Hudson is spending his summer vacation with his upper middle-class parents in Thunder Bay on rugged Lake Superior. His dull routine is given a jumpstart when he befriends Riley and Nate, working-class cousins staying with their grandmother, who pass their ample free time with debauchery and reckless cliff jumping. Sporadically joined by Adam's friend Taylor, the three boys become inseparable, but their friendship is uneasy and rife with hormonal tension, bullying and jealousy.
Riley witnesses Adam's father engaging an extramarital affair with a local shopkeeper and tells Adam, who begins to act out in his father's company and engage in increasingly dangerous mischief with his friends. The revelation of his father's infidelity triggers a series of irreversible events that test the bonds of friendship and change the boys forever.
On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 87% based on 23 reviews, and an average rating of 7.5/10.[4] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 71 out of 100, based on 5 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[5]
Variety's Guy Lodge called the film an "accomplished debut," adding, "Cividino depicts the tricky male power games between the boys with tact and compassionate impartiality."[6] Jessica Kiang for The Playlist wrote "Perhaps most impressive is how, despite the nostalgia inherent in this kind of endeavor, Sleeping Giant never sentimentalizes its story, and never compromises on the essentially bleak idea that you can be transformed from a carefree child shading your eyes from the glare of a huge, wide future to a scarred and haunted young adult in a single moment."[7]
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