A playful nod to John Carpenter’s The Thing, Nyla Innuksuk’s engaging horror-slash-coming-of-ager dreams up a spooky alien invasion on Pangnirtung, a snowy, mountainous Inuit hamlet situated on the Canadian territory of Baffin Island. This time around, the heroes of the story are a band of Indigenous girls who wield the hunting weapons of their ancestors with plenty of swagger against the bloodthirsty invaders.
Despite the limited budget, the designs of the monsters are genuinely terrifying. Once the parasitic predators succeed in taking the shapes of its hosts – which include both humans and animals – these masses of tentacles creepily slosh inside their victims, turning them into macabre skin sacks staggering towards their next prey. Sandwiched between the adrenaline-pumping chases, however, is teenage banter and squabbles, as the girls groan about being grounded or gossip about the hottest boy in school.
In fusing two different genres, the pacing of Slash/Back occasionally suffers from a tonal clumsiness: the girls’ penchant for quips and deadpan jokes lends an entertaining authenticity to events but at the same time the overdeployment of these wisecracks lessens the visceral impact of the horror elements. Moreover, the effort to evoke the disconnect felt by teenagers towards their Indigenous upbringing is less than subtle, with repeated lines referring to the community’s cultural practices as “dumb Inuit stuff”. Still, thanks to the breezy chemistry between its largely Inuit cast, Slash/Back has an endearing charm that is hard to resist. From a first-time film-maker, this is a fresh, entertaining update on well-worn tropes.
• Slash/Back is available on 18 November on Shudder.
