PLOT: When Maika and her ragtag friends discover an alien invasion in their tiny arctic hamlet, it’s up to them to save the day. Utilizing their makeshift weapons and horror movie knowledge, the aliens realize you don’t mess with girls from Pang.
REVIEW: Slash/Back clearly has its sights set high right from the onset: an alien invasion story in a small arctic town. The focus is mostly on a group of Inuit girls who are just dealing with the perils of regular teen life: friendships and crushes. So the idea of them banding together to take on a bunch of aliens, Goonies-style, seems like it’d be a fun time. Given its arctic setting and Alien involvement, it’s also easy to see the parallels between this and The Thing. They make sure to lean into it, even talking about the Carpenter film and describing the plot. But that’s about as fun as it gets.
The rest of the story really meanders around with some truly uninspired dialogue and strange blocking. Slash/Back is very ambitious with its usage of young, unknown actors for most of the main roles. The movie rests on their shoulders and, for the most part, they do an admirable job. Some are little uninspired, but I kind of got used to the awkward delivery. You can tell that this is a very low-budget production that used many locals for its casting. It would have really helped to have a great lead to help guide the story, but instead its mostly split between the four girls. Thankfully, the film looks much higher than its budget would suggest, showing a lot of potential behind the camera.
The effects aren’t great and that’s really evidenced by the Polar Bear sequence. I’m often a big defender of CGI in lower-budget films, but I also feel like it really shouldn’t be used extensively if you don’t know if you can pull it off. They don’t pull it off and it’s rather frustrating since it’s such a pivotal component of the film. And then the few times that they use puppets, they look like nothing more than stuffed animals. I was just grateful that the tentacles were serviceable because they get a lot of screen time.
One of the bigger issues with Slash/Back is the fact that the aliens don’t really feel like a threat. Sure, they’re taking out the town, but we hardly have any time to react to these changes. The fact that these aren’t “invasion of the body snatcher” style aliens and instead more “turn you into zombies” kinds of aliens, it limits the story. And by the time the ending comes, nothing really feels like it’s significantly changed. Which begs the question of simply: what was the point?
This is director Nyla Innuksuk’s first feature film and she does a decent enough job. You can tell she really wanted to tell this story. But unfortunately, there’s not a very interesting one being told. The alien invasion angle mostly feels tacked on and these characters would have been better served in a coming-of-age drama with actual stakes. The invasion feels half baked and suffers greatly from the characters telling me why the aliens are going to wipe out everyone, but in execution, they just look slow and weak.
If anything, Slash/Back feels very unique and original due to its location and characters. It’s clearly the work of a lot of love and perseverance. Unfortunately the acting is pretty rough and makes it rather difficult to connect with any of the child actors. It’s difficult to see anything but the actors being very focused on their lines. A film with child leads absolutely lives and dies on those performances and unfortunately, it just doesn’t work here.
Slash/Back is STREAMING ON SHUDDER ON OCTOBER 21st, 2022.