Director: Nyla Innuksuk
Year: 2022
Country: Canada
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Creature Feature
Plot:
Living in a remote village, a group of Indigenous friends trying to enjoy their day-long summer activities get wind that their neighbors' disappearance is caused by a strange shapeshifting alien invasion coming to their town. They must use their skillset to fight back against the invaders.
Review:
This was a massively fun and enjoyable feature with a lot to like. Among the best parts of this one come from the idea that there’s such a strong central setup present that it sets up the fun storyline incredibly well. This one starts off incredibly well with the build-up of life in the village where we get to see the friendship dynamics between everyone while also trying to navigate family responsibilities, the nature of being in an isolated part of the world as they are, and the different family dynamics that come into play as well. It creates a fun sense of individual identity within the group so that the later attack scenes have a strong emotional weight to them with the way it contrasts their beginning stages with the newfound desire to protect the family unit they’ve established so far.
When things start picking up and the discovery of the aliens comes about, this one becomes rather enjoyable with some thrilling moments. The initial outbreak of the aliens coming to take over the local wildlife in a parasitic manner leads to some tense confrontations with the unaware group of friends mistaking it for a real creature before leading them to the truth with the revelation that these aliens are controlling them. This ends up making the gradual integration of the creatures into their society all the more dangerous which makes the latter half feature some impressive scenes of the girls going around the town using their handmade weapons to fight back. These are generally fun with the rather exciting battles detailing how the girls hunt the creatures down using their knowledge against them in a smart manner, all giving this quite a lot to like about it.
There are some issues here that do bring it down. The main issue with this one is the simplistic storyline that sets up life in the colony rather well but tends to make the alien invasion somewhat of an afterthought. Very rarely does it apply genuine insight into the creatures as everything known about them is imposition gathered from their encounters so there’s very little purpose behind their appearance or purpose for being on Earth which is by design since no one is available to learn anything. However, it still leaves so much of their purpose unexplored. The other small issue here is that this causes a slightly slow-going beginning where it goes quite in-depth on their lives in the village that it doesn’t get the invasion into things until over the halfway point which is a bit too long, but otherwise isn’t all that bad of a feature.
Overview: ***.5/5
A rather fun and overall likable genre effort, this one manages to get quite fun with how it handles things even if there are some drawbacks present that do help hold it down. Those with an interest in this style of feature or are curious about it will have the most to like about it while most others out there should heed caution.
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