Not everyone is a fan of Martin Scorsese’s latest film. In a long thread on X (the site formerly known as Twitter), Reservation Dogs star Devery Jacobs wrote about her “strong feelings” about Killers of the Flower Moon, calling the film “painful, grueling, unrelenting and unnecessarily graphic.”
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Jacobs, an Indigenous Canadian actress, starred in FX’s critically acclaimed, recently wrapped comedy, which follows four Indigenous teenagers on a reservation in Oklahoma. Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon is about members of the Osage Nation that were murdered in 1920s Oklahoma, and stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert DeNiro, and Lily Gladstone. The film opened on Friday October 20 and won the weekend box office, earning $44 million and cementing its status as a serious Oscar contender.
“Being Native, watching this movie was fucking hellfire,” wrote Jacobs. “Imagine the worst atrocities committed against yr ancestors, then having to sit thru a movie explicitly filled w/ them, w/ the only respite being 30min long scenes of murderous white guys talking about/planning the killings.”
Jacobs also showered praise on fellow Indigenous actress Gladstone, calling her “an absolute legend” and saying that she played the role of Mollie Burkhart, DiCaprio’s Native wife, with “tremendous grace.” “All the incredible Indigenous actors were the only redeeming factors of this film,” she wrote. “Give Lily her goddamn Oscar.”
But while she celebrated Gladstone’s performance, Jacobs said that the other Indigenous characters “felt painfully underwritten, while the white men were given way more courtesy and depth.” She went on to criticize Scorsese’s use of violence in the film against Native characters. “I don’t feel that these very real people were shown honor or dignity in the horrific portrayal of their deaths,” she wrote. “Contrarily, I believe that by showing more murdered Native women on screen, it normalizes the violence committed against us and further dehumanizes our people.”
In the thread, Jacobs admitted that Scorsese’s “technical direction is compelling,” and said that seeing a big-budget drama about Native people “a sight to behold.” Still, Jacobs was firm in her belief that Killers of the Flower Moon contributed to the relentless persecution of Indigenous people on screen. “I can’t believe it needs to be said, but Indig ppl exist beyond our grief, trauma & atrocities,” she wrote. “Our pride for being Native, our languages, cultures, joy & love are way more interesting & humanizing than showing the horrors white men inflicted on us.”
