Slash/Back Is A Smart Alien Invasion Flick With Effective Body Horror

Indigenous and First Nations filmmakers have really been rising in the ranks in genre cinema, with a number of talented projects coming to the fore. Slash/Back, premiering at SXSW 2022, is another clever, well-landed entry in this tradition. The film follows a group of teenage girls of various ages who stumble upon an alien invasion while traversing the arctic wilderness near their town of Pangnirtung. Maika (Tasiana Shirley), Jesse (Alexis Vincent-Wolfe), Leena (Chelsea Pruksy) and Uki (Nalajoss Ellsworth) first discover the odd extraterrestrials in the visage of a polar bear that doesn’t quite look (or move) right. They soon discover that nothing and no one is safe from these body-snatching aliens, and they have to draw upon modern horror movie knowledge and a proud hunting history to combat the alien menace. A repeated refrain is “nobody f*cks with the girls from Pang,” and these aliens come to understand why.

The film is a labor of love for Nyla Innuksuk, who directed, produced, and co-wrote the film (the latter with Ryan Cavan). Of the young performers, lead Tasiana Shirley (playing Maika) is great—strong, determined, and a really grounded performance against some surreal plot elements. The other performances are pretty solid for young performers (with some performative weaknesses in particular scenes, but nothing that takes you out of the film). Overall it’s a well cast piece with quite capable performances from the young performers.

The film’s cinematography, shot by DP Guy Godfree, is also adeptly done, really capturing the gorgeous but dangerous surroundings of the local arctic town. Its a gorgeously shot film, and the film’s sparse budget is amplified by both the smart camera work and some truly clever plot contrivances. The costume work and VFX for the aliens, who take the form of real-world people and animals, isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty darn good overall and (most intelligently) the close-enough-but-not-perfect veneer becomes a conscious subject for the young protagonists to discuss. The masks of the captured humans aren’t the most believable, but that itself becomes a feature the girls themeslves bring up in a brilliant nod that lands an element common to limited budget genre films and makes it a feature, not a bug. Honestly, it’s brilliant.

The horror elements really land here, particularly with the body horror elements and the performers playing real-life victims to this alien menace. You get a feeling that these body-snatched beasties and people are essentially skin-bags full of tentacled alien beasts, that can reach out through eye holes with strange stalks. The ‘human’ victims walk with an odd pacing, contorting and convulsing as they chase you in haunting and unnatural ways with human skin ‘masks’ that look juuuuuust real enough. It’s smartly constructed and unsettling.

The film’s script overall is a smart and clever tale, sometimes taking the ‘alien invasion’ elements as metaphors for the colonial processes that Indigenous and First Nations peoples have long faced and fought against. At the same time it doesn’t hit the audience over the rhetorical head, and the story works on its own merits. The biggest issue with the film overall is that some segments have disjointed or too-slow pacing with some major moments of lag in the first half, but overall it’s a smart, well written, solid genre entry.

Altogether, Slash/Back is a stellar alien invasion yarn with great body horror elements, and it ends on a smart, open world note. The performances aren’t uniformly viable in every scene but they’re certainly impressive for performers so young, and the project has a smart script that makes what could be budget weaknesses into real strengths. Altogether, Slash/Back is a fully enjoyable ride that’s absolutely worth your time.

Slash/Back premiered at SXSW 2022.