Life on the Rock never seemed easy, but for Mitsy it is especially rough. The teenager has been abandoned by her mother, a particularly unfit parent prone to both the bottle and the sex trade. She is left to be brought up by her mercurial grandmother Bride, who is well-meaning but oppressively suffocating. Mitsy's dreams for the future hinge on her desire to be a hairdresser, but her current emotional well-being revolves around a wee dog named Sparky, an unwanted canine misfit to whom she becomes hopelessly attached. After Bride agrees to let Mitsy take the dog in as a pet, the teen tries desperately to create a happy, safe place for Sparky to thrive - basically, she wants to offer the dog the kinds of comforts she has never known. But Mitsy's life is shaken once more when her mother returns to Newfoundland. Even though Mitsy is thrilled, Bride wants nothing to do with her never-do-well deadbeat daughter. It's a family made up of three wildly dysfunctional generations, always poised to clash. And in the midst of it all, Mitsy is learning about her emerging sexuality and developing a crush on a local bad boy who works in a rather grim fast food joint.

“Crackie is a small masterpiece of Canadian realism. This feature debut by writer-director Sherry White is set in a bleak Newfoundland that might as well be Siberia, so remote is it from polite, middle-class Canada. Teen Mitsy (Meghan Greeley, in her first and astonishingly good performance) lives with grandmother Bride (Mary Walsh), having been abandoned by her drifting, drunken mother. She needs a home, hearth and love, the same needs as the dog, Sparky, she adopts. Mitsy wants to be a hairdresser but can barely keep her little life together. She falls hard for a predatory, moronic lothario (Joel Hynes) and recognizes the bleakness of her existence. The only transcendence is in bonding, reluctantly, with Bride. (Mary Walsh gives her finest ever dramatic performance here.) Gorgeously made, this hushed, intelligent movie has no sentimentality and marks the arrival of a major filmmaking talent.” - John Doyle, The Globe and Mail