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Google Play“I love horror movies and I love slasher movies,” says Slash/Back director Nyla Innuksuk. The Inuk filmmaker gives the slasher genre an Indigenous twist with her first feature. Slash/Back is the story of an alien outbreak in the northern community of Pangnirtung, Nunavut. Slithery strange invaders feed on local elders, inhabiting their bodies to prey on the younger generation. Where kids in most horror flicks split up, and get butchered in the process, Maika (Tasiana Shirley), Jessie (Alexis Vincent-Wolfe), Uki (Nalajoss Ellsworth), and Leena (Chelsea Prusky) stick together instead of going all Sidney Prescott or Laurie Strode to fight the baddies alone. “It was interesting to play with that dynamic of friendship at that age, how important it is, and how challenging it can be too at times,” explains Innuksuk.
Slash/Back marks Innuksuk’s first feature, but this trip to the picturesque coastal community on Baffin Island is an awesome feat of world building. Drawing upon Innuksuk’s roots in short film, documentary, and virtual reality, Slash/Back is a genre-mashup that remains authentic in its portrait of a community, infusing elements of horror and sci-fi with Inuit folklore as the girls recognize in the aliens the mythological beast Ijiraq, who preys upon children. Typical growing pains of adolescence and boy trouble provide both laughs and suspense as the girls learn what it means to fight for their community. Slash/Back is a fun, blood-soaked tale of Indigenous resilience that does for Baffin Island what Attack the Block did for South London youths.
Complex Canada spoke with Nyla Innuksuk ahead of Slash/Back’s release on June 24.
How does Slash/Back challenge the character of the final girl in horror movies?
I grew up with Scream and the final girl. It’s fun to have a movie that plays with those genres, but is really about a group of friends with the friendship being a theme. This movie’s for an audience a bit younger than Scream, more for a preteen girl. When I was that age, that’s when I was falling in love with horror movies. My friends were the most important thing on the planet at that age.
When I was hanging out with these girls while we were developing the script, all they wanted to talk about were boys and teenage drama, like who’s dating who. Those things overwhelm everything else. And you’re like, “Oh, these are just teenage girls.” They could be in any place in the world, and they’d be having these exact same conversations.
“Even if Slash/Back totally failed, what is so important for us is Indigenous screen sovereignty—your right to tell your own stories and that we should be financing them with proper budgets.”
There’s a fun cameo by Natar Ungalaaq, the great star of Atanarjuat. How did he feel about being alien meat?
I think he really loved the idea of being part of the movie and being an alien. He is from my home community of Igloolik, so it was so nice to have that representation. Obviously, for us in Nunavut, he’s like our movie star. Atanarjuat was a big deal for everyone in Nunavut, even if more so for the cinematic community, but then for him to agree to be someone who gets his fate in this film was particularly fun. He was such a good sport and such a professional. For me and the other teenage actors—it was their first acting experience and my first time directing—we felt lucky for him to be on set with us and work with us.
What inspired the look of the aliens? It seems like there’s like a bit of like Michael Myers, a bit of Leatherface, along with elements of folklore like Ijiraq. And what’s the mix between practical effects and post-production CGI?
I love movies from the ’70s and horror movies that incorporated practical effects. I think it’s so cool. I really set out to do as much practically and in camera as possible. We had Steve Newburn build our skin suits and other prosthetics. It was fun to go by his shop and to see what he could create. We worked together to come up with the creatures and see how they would act. What they would look like obviously started in the script phase with Ryan Cavan and I trying to figure out how the creatures could take over a person. They take over your body and you’re still you, but not quite. We wanted it to be this creepy thing and then the idea of the tentacles was fun to work with. Troy James, a contortionist, saw how to move if you’re a creature made of tentacles that can take over the skins of bodies like a beast. How would you move if you were not quite sure how to move like a human?
We spent a lot of time at a studio here in Toronto playing around with movement. We also had Ofilio Portillo, who does a lot of the stunt work when you see the aliens. When you see two aliens at once, that was both of them. Ofilio learned to match Troy’s movements, but there are some movements that only Troy is capable of because he’s double jointed in every joint in his body. He can move backwards. We actually had this giant eight-foot polar bear suit made for him that he could wear upside-down, which is an uncomfortable way to walk, but I was asking him to run down a hill upside down in a bear suit. [Laughs.] But we ended up replacing it with a CG bear, which was a bit of a heartbreak. I thought it looked so cool and weird, and I like the campiness of those practical effects, but it was a little too distracting.
What impact did those films have on yours?
Essentially, at the same time I was pitching Slash/Back, she was developing Night Raiders and at the time I was developing Slash/Back, Jeff was making his feature. It was just nice to know they were doing that. When I saw Blood Quantum at TIFF 2019, I was in post-production, so I had already finished shooting Slash/Back. To watch it was this huge relief for me because I was like, “Oh my gosh! Thank God it’s good!” [Laughs.] There was all this pressure. If it wasn’t good, then people were gonna be like, “What are we doing putting all of this money into these things that aren’t any good?” The pressure was off a little bit with Jeff having done a good job and same with Danis. I almost felt like I could mess up a little. Even if Slash/Back totally failed, what is so important for us is Indigenous screen sovereignty—your right to tell your own stories and that we should be financing them with proper budgets. Those pressures weren’t all on me, which was great.
The ending really gives it an extra political punch with the play between Slash/Back and Land/Back in the titles. Did you get much pushback on that?
We hadn’t planned for Land/Back to be in there, but it certainly is about these teenage girls fighting a threat that is invading their hometown and this Indigenous community. The themes were there and then when it came to doing the titles and the graphics, I just had an idea. So I told the graphics people and all of my producers were cc’d. Everybody just thought it was a cool idea. I didn’t get any pushback. I had a lot of support throughout the process when it came to creative and had the final word.
That would be fun.
