[2] McKenzie was born on Cape Breton Island and raised in New Waterford, Nova Scotia.
[8] For her short film work, McKenzie has won the National Screen Institute's Shaw Media Fearless Female Director Award three times, in 2013, 2014, and 2015.
[12] In 2016, for her work on the film, McKenzie won the Stella Artois Jay Scott Prize.
[15] Joe Leydon of Variety described McKenzie's directing style as having "borderline Bressonian austerity.
"[16] In an article called "A Generational Shift in Filmmaking", in discussing Werewolf, Richard Brody of The New Yorker wrote that "McKenzie fuses a documentary-like observational precision with a creative imagination that endows her characters' struggles with a quietly monumental grandeur.