SLASH/BACK – directed by Nyla Innuksuk – (limited spoilers)

In the town of Pangnirtung on Baffin Island, on the east side of Cumberland Sound, four girls, Maike (Tasiana Shirley), Uki (Nalajoss Ellsworth), Jesse (Alexis Wolfe), and Leena (Chelsea Prusky), decide to take a boat up the coast to some (presently deserted) hunting cabins. Once there, they exchange scary stories and Uki offers a tale she claims is true. “You know the Kattuk boy that went missing last spring?,” she asks. “Well Brenda was talking to Billy Mike, and Billy Mike was talking to a fisherman from Iqualuit, and he said that he saw the boy playing by the water. And then like a fog rolls in, and out comes a gray head with long black hair…snatches the boy and drags him into the water.” She then suggests the boy might have been taken by the Qualupalik. Of the four, Uki is the only one who enjoys living in Pangnirtung. The others wish they were elsewhere. They are bored with the town, and regard legends such as the Qualupalik as “silly Inuk shit”.

A younger girl, Aju (Frankie Vincent-Wolfe), follows the boat on her bike and catches up to the other girls just in time to be attacked by a polar bear that is behaving strangely. Maike shoots the animal. (She has brought her rifle along.) After saving Aju, the five head back to town by boat. Aju is not injured but has blood on her shirt from the bear, and her bike has been left behind. Uki can’t stop thinking about the bear. “It didn’t move right,” she says. “And it’s blood was black.”

Back in town, Uki suggests that the bear might have been an Ijiraq and is asked to explain. “Ijiraq are things that live in two worlds,” she tells them. “If you go far enough north, there’s a whole other world…they can disguise themselves as anything. And when they do they snatch children and bring them back to their world.” The creatures they will encounter do seem Ijiraq-like, but have, perhaps, a more varied agenda. We see an adult fisherman (played by Natar Ungalaaq) dragged into the sea, and we hear on the TV news that American geologist Tony Konk (Kristian Bruun) has disappeared while taking snow samples in the area and has been missing for six days.

After being dared to hunt that strange bear, Uki goes exploring and we get a close up (through her binoculars) of something large and tentacled. It is a long day (24 hours of sunlight) and while their parents celebrate the summer solstice, Maike, Uki, Jesse, and Leena do battle with one of the creatures after it possesses the body of a local cop named Lefebvre (Shaun Benson). Like the bear, Lefebvre has been hollowed out to make room for something else inside.

A CBC reporter (Melissa Hood) arrives in town looking for a story and only Uki seems enthusiastic about talking to her. “Hey, hey news chick!” she shouts. “I killed tons of aliens. I found the aliens, and I knew they were aliens before anyone else knew they were aliens. I got clawed by one after it chased me under a house.” (Uki then insists on being paid in advance for any interviews.)

The invaders might be extraterrestrials. Uki’s interpretation of things does not necessarily conflict with that. According to Inuk legends, the Ijiraq can come from places beneath the sea, inside the earth, or in the sky.

Director Nyla Innuksuk (who co-wrote the screenplay with Ryan Cavan) told Michelle Swope of Bloody Disgusting: “I had a full bear suit made for our contortionist. It only worked if he was essentially backwards and upside down. It’s this crazy, impractical position and he spent all day running in this position downhill. It looked so cool and wonky and really kind of campy in a way, so we ended up just matching the body movements and replacing it with a CG bear…We got to work with skin suits and this amazing contortionist, Troy James, who is basically double-jointed and can do the craziest things with his body. The aliens are these monsters that are basically made out of tentacles and take over the bodies of creatures and wear their skin as a disguise.”

At the beginning of the end credits SLASH/BACK transforms into LAND/BACK, but only for a moment.

---

SLASH/BACK can be streamed on HULU in the US, and on Apple TV in Canada.
The film is also available on DVD and Blu-ray.