To most Edmonton filmgoers, the term "local movie" conjures up visions of Brad Pitt saddling up as Jesse James at Fort Edmonton.

While there is nothing wrong with a sense of pride and excitement whenever Hollywood and its stars visit our burg, there is also reason for Edmontonians to be just as proud of our fledgling but active local film scene. Proof of the high quality of our homegrown output arrives with SEG/ME/NTS, the haunting, captivating debut feature from six-year-old Edmonton company tyrant pictures, (otherwise known as David Bates of quirky short My Pet Cowboy fame).

Canadian films tend to come loaded down with some serious baggage: they either wear their Canadian-ness self-consciously or abandon it entirely in an effort to copy the Hollywood flavor of the month (Air Bud, anyone?). There is nothing stale about SEG/ME/NTS, which consists of three separate yet interconnected crime tales.

Writer/directors David Bates, Adam J. Smith, and Jon Baptiste confidently choose to film a story in Edmonton while also placing it in its own film noir universe–no WEM or sport mentions here–relentlessly keeping you off balance and wondering. You’re not gonna be let off the hook easy, because although SEG/ME/NTS was shot in your hometown, it most certainly is not the squeaky-clean City of Champions you remember, even though brightly lit food courts and farmers markets do make a fleeting appearance or two.

SEG/ME/NTS heads straight for dark criminal underbelly with its first segment, titled "The Intruder," written and directed by Bates. The intruder (Murray Utas) is an obsessive car thief clad in black. It’s not like he never learned the difference between right and wrong, he tells us in a voiceover. He just doesn’t care either way, for he’s also obsessed with breaking into people’s homes at night... just to watch them sleep. At first he’s content to sit in a corner and observe his obliviously slumbering subjects. But that thrill soon becomes stale, and he must up the ante. He chooses a woman he’s been watching for a while in a food court, who works, eats, and lives alone as his next subject; his obsessiveness takes on a darker tinge.

The mood is anything but festive in Smith’s "Musical Chairs," in which Steve Makenzie (Brodie Roberts) wakes up one morning to find himself poisoned. Only an unseen mystery man with a cell phone knows where Steve can get an antidote. But when he arrives, he soon finds the room filled with five other people in a similar situation. Just to keep things interesting, there are seven antidote vials. One of the six will be gambling with their life when they take their medicine. Who will it be: Steve, take-charge Jonathan (Aaron Talbot), nervous Terry (Johny Holeton) or April (Tiffany Christou)? And who the hell’s the mystery cell phone caller?

In Baptiste’s "Visions," disgraced police detective James Parker (Matt Kloster) is cursed with a hauntingly tragic sense of second sight since the murder of his son Joshua (My Pet Cowboy’s Liam Livingstone.) He’s afflicted with premonitions of murders before they happen, and he’s reluctant to share his burden with his sympathetic partner (Krista Neblock). His hard-nosed boss (Andy Northrup) erupts in fury when Parker shows up at fresh crime scenes uninvited. And there’s even a pajama-clad man in his house (Rio Loco’s Chris Craddock) insisting rather forcefully that it’s his house.

What the hell gives? What’s it all mean? All I can tell you is that there is much in SEG/ME/NTS that cannot be related, only experienced.

Writers Bates, Smith, and Baptiste have fashioned a modern film noir mosaic with a dash of Shyamalan-esque style that will richen with repeat viewings. We will doubtless see more from the team of tyrants and this talented cast (Murray Utas in a Fincher feature? Ya never know).

Although SEG/MEN/TS is definitely not for every taste, those looking for an alternative to cookie-cutter Hollywood will be rewarded this weekend at the Roxy.