With the Canada Film Fest underway, general audiences in the downtown Toronto area will be able to experience some of the best shorts and features that this country has to offer. In the case of Ordinary Days however, watching this film made me experience anything but that.

Told from three different perspectives, each one by a different director, Ordinary Days tells the story Cara Cook (Jacqueline Byers), an athletic College student who goes missing, and the people who are affected by the events of the film. Her parents, Marie and Rich (Torri Higginson and Richard Clarkin, respectively), who Cara has been emotionally distant from, Detective Jonathan Brightbill (Michael Xavier), who is tasked with finding her, and Cara herself (Jacqueline Byers).

Ordinary Days plays out more like a series of tonally disconnected shorts made by undergraduate film production students rather than one full cohesive story. Which such a shame since Jordan Canning, who directed the Marie segment, which is the strongest story out of three, did an amicable job with 2017’s Suck it Up. After Marie, the film becomes disinteresting, with clichéd character traits, and tired, drawn out melodrama that left this reviewer wanting to fill the running time with a mixture of the first half of a Law and Order rerun, and 127 Hours.

Though the acting by the cast is adequate for the most part, I have to reiterate back to Marie, which is the only fully realized perspective in the story that has any nuance. The sound design for certain moments perfectly encapsulates the feeling how a parent would feel when their child goes missing, and Higginson shines as the distressed mother while playing off of Clarkin.