Slash/Back: Teen Girls Fight Aliens in an Indigenous Addition to the Monsters-in-the-Arctic Genre

By Thom Ernst

Rating: B-

A group of teen girls, distracted by texting, and the acrobatics of balancing a line between standing apart and fitting in, discover that a body-jacking alien has invaded their community.

As aliens are wont to do, the alien is intent on inhabiting Earth. Or if not the entire Earth, a foothold in the northernmost peaks of the planet, one polar-ice creature at a time.  

With most of the town's adults at a local mixer - which, according to the teens, will render their guardians drunk and useless - the girls are left defending the town. 

An alien-possessed Nunavut local in Slash/Back

Maika (Tasiana Shirley), Jesse (Alexis Wolfe), Uki (Nalajoss Ellsworth), and Leena (Chelsea Prusky) live in the remote town of Pangnirtung, Nunavut. Not a lot seems to be going on in Pang (the town's abbreviated handle), particularly for girls in the ages between childhood and adult.

So, they ride bikes, abscond with boats, and talk about leaving Pang for someplace where the boys are cooler. That is, until an unsanctioned trip across the fjords ends in a polar bear attack. Attack aside, there's something wrong about the bear's awkward way of lumbering across the tundra as if it were a marionette on broken strings. 

One of the girls thinks it was the evil spirit their ancestors warned them of. Her comments are dismissed as being "silly Inuit stuff." There are enough teen-driven dismissals of Inuit culture, lifestyles, and mythology to suggest the need for a reunion with their ancestry. But of this group of teens, only one never questions the value of living in Pang and seems confused by the others' lack of appreciation for their home. 

Slash/Back is a horror movie in the spirit of The Goonies and Attack the Block. It's Steven Spielberg working with a fraction of Joe Dante's budget (and Joe Cornish's, for that matter.) As horror movies go, Slash/Back is tame. Not that the film is bloodless.  Nor is it without tension. But mostly it plays like a loving tribute to the movies that first-feature director Nyla Innuksuk grew up with.

Read our interview with Slash/Back director Nyla Innuksuk

With a phonetic likeness to flashback, Slash/Back is a nostalgic movie experience referencing The Thing from Another World (1951) or John Carpenter's redefining remake, The Thing (1982), E.T. The Extraterrestrial (1982), and two of the many versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956/1978).

There aren't a lot of horror films set in remote Arctic regions. (Tough to cast? Hard to secure a crew? Too expensive?) I can think of four. Aside from the aforementioned The Thing, there is the eco-horror, The Last Winter (2006), which attempts to pull off a herd of killer-ghost caribou, and the vampire thriller 30 Days of Night (2007). There is also the televised series, The Terror (2018).

Slash/Back distinguishes itself from those chilled-to-the-bone features in that its central characters are Indigenous to the community it depicts. Except for a police officer (Shaun Benson) who couldn't hide his white privilege in a blizzard, and a geologist (Kristian Bruun) who isn't around long enough to register as much a character, this is an all-Indigenous—specifically Inuit—cast. 

Innuksu has a deep affection for the community she's from and equal respect for the movies she grew up watching. Despite its horror-film veneer, Innuksuk wraps the viewer in a warm blanket of nostalgia whenever the film threatens to chill. But Slash/Back has enough creep factor to settle any argument purporting that Stranger Things only happen in the cozy climates of Midwest America.

Slash/Back. Directed by Nyla Innuksuk. Starring Tasiana Shirley, Alexis Vincent-Wolfe, Chelsea Pruksy, Nalajoss Ellsworth, Shaun Benson and Tony Konk. Opens June 24 in theatres in Toronto (Fox), Vancouver (Vancity), Ottawa (ByTowne), Winnipeg (Cinematheque), Edmonton (Metro), Saskatoon (Broadway) and Kingston (Screening Room).