In Blood Quantum, the dead are coming back to life outside the isolated Mi’gmaq reserve of Red Crow – and its Indigenous inhabitants soon discover they’re immune to the zombie plague. Traylor (Michael Greyeyes), the tribal sheriff, must protect his son’s pregnant girlfriend, apocalyptic refugees, and reserve riff-raff from the hordes of walking (and, yes, running) white corpses.
It was early September 2019 when I met with the cast and director of Blood Quantum. Cast members Michael Greyeyes, Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, Forrest Goodluck, and writer/director Jeff Barnaby were in Toronto for the film’s world premiere at TIFF. Excited, a little anxious, and ready to talk about the film’s gore as well as its social significance, I had the immense privilege of sitting down with them to find out just what a production like this meant to them, why horror was the right vessel for this kind of story, and the unavoidable – and profoundly important – politics of its subject matter.
Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers. (Photo by Giordano Ciampini)
Ariel Fisher: So I know it’s been a while since you wrapped shooting, but can you tell me a bit about what it was like on set?
Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers: I had just wrapped The Body Remembers When The World Broke Open, and then I got on a red eye and flew to Montreal and started Blood Quantum the next day. So it was this bizarre world transition. But it was an incredible experience. The cast and crew were amazing. And it’s such a bizarre but brilliant concept. You’re set, and there’s blood and gore and zombies and stunts and guns and all of these things that are so, you know, telling of a genre film. But this film, in and of itself, is rooted in such a complicated subject. It very much reflects the sort of systemic violence that Indigenous people face every day. So that was kind of like a constant thing that was on my mind as an actor is that this is very much rooted in something real.
Michael Greyeyes: For me, it was an exhausting shoot, actually. You know, there were a lot of night [shoots] and when you shoot at night it’s just really tough. On the crew, on our bodies-
Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers: Not on (co-star) Stonehorse [Lone Goeman], though.
Michael Greyeyes: Not on Stonehorse. Stonehorse is a machine. He’s not really human. But It’s hard. And you know, I was really exhausted at the end of the show. More so than a lot of other films. And I think one of the reasons I figured out was like, oh, it’s because every day on the set was the end of the world. Right? You know, some catastrophic, life-threatening moment, scene after scene.
Ariel Fisher: Insanity.
Forrest Goodluck: Yeah, pretty much, I would say. I mean, Jeff has this crazy vision. And then you have a ton of actors, especially Indigenous actors, in a pool, which you don’t normally get to work with. I think in my experience, it’s either one or two Native people on set that are a part of a larger film that isn’t supporting your narrative. This was the first time I was on a set where it was Native actors and non-Native actors, all coming together to make and tell a story that supports our narrative. And every day was so exciting for me. I was just so happy to be there. I was like, Oh, shit, I don’t have to try to be someone else. Or try to prove someone else’s narrative. I can just come here, and it’s like, here is what I can bring to it.
Ariel Fisher: Was this a rare opportunity for all of you?
Michael Greyeyes: Yeah. I mean, I think you have to understand that within the landscape of cinema, that this is still, unfortunately, groundbreaking. Indigenous filmmakers, the Indigenous filmmaking community, has been around a long time, and to find financing for projects like this is always hard. But Indigenous filmmakers have been a really strong presence in the history of it. But access and allowing films like that, to have platforms like TIFF, was quite rare. I’ve been fortunate that I’ve been a part of a lot of Indigenous film. So that was not as unusual. But actually, his comments reminded me of how many times I’m the only Indigenous person on a set, or in a room. Right? I mean, I’m doing a new series right now and I’m the only Indigenous character in the whole story. So Yeah, it’s rare. It’s still groundbreaking. And that’s weird.
Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers: Well, Rhymes For Young Ghouls [Jeff Barnaby’s debut feature film] is such an important film in terms of Indigenous cinema and Canadian cinema in general. So when I received the call for the audition for this film, I was just over the moon, because I wanted to work with Jeff. As an Indigenous director [myself], I love watching other directors work. So I was so curious to see what his process was like. And, you know, he’s so deeply committed to story and his vision. And that was inspiring to witness. Every day on set was actually exhausting. But it was so much fun. Because, if you know Indigenous people, there’s a lot of laughter. So, despite the fact that it was the end of the world literally every day on set, It was also a lot of fun. So on those nights where we were working until five or six in the morning, there was at least this energy that propelled us forward and kept us going. But it was a rare opportunity in the sense that, as Michael said, it’s very challenging for Indigenous filmmakers to access the funding necessary to make a film that requires a budget like this. And I think they were even not working with what they should have been working with. I think this film deserved even more funds than it received. So I really hope that this film has a long life. And Canadian funders recognize that they need to continue to support Indigenous cinema because we have really valuable stories, and there’s also an audience for Indigenous cinema.
Michael Greyeyes. (Photo by Giordano Ciampini)
Ariel Fisher: Zombie films have always been political, in some form or another. From films like I Walked With A Zombie in 1943 that was commenting on slavery, to the incidental political statement that Romero made by casting Duane Jones as Ben in Night Of The Living Dead. This very much seems to follow that trend. What do you hope international and especially Canadian audiences can take away from the messages this film brings to the foreground?
Michael Greyeyes: I’m a fan of the genre, like, really intensely. So, if you look at a film like The Hoard (2009), Blood Quantum is really kind of part of that vein of filmmaking. Something really dark, visceral, and violent. I watched Jim Jarmusch’s film [The Dead Don’t Die (2019)], I wasn’t a fan of that, because it did not really engage with why I come to the genre. But Jeff’s does, in spades. So I think the complexity of his world is fueled by this feeling of being an outsider. The sort of anger that Jeff has, that we all have, that we’ve experienced. It all fuels this — this counter narrative. So yes, it’s the end of the world, it’s a zombie apocalypse. Lots of people have been down this road, but what he’s doing is he’s hijacking these tropes. And literally repopulating the DNA of it towards our perspective. Yeah, okay, zombies, a virus, an outbreak. But Indigenous People’s understanding of disease and how settlers brought disease is different. It’s keener. It was used as a weapon. So when we look at that idea inside Blood Quantum, inside this narrative, I think Indigenous audiences immediately take it a different way. And what Jeff is doing is he’s hijacking the consciousness of a larger audience, an international audience, towards an Indigenous perspective.
Forrest Goodluck: I think it’s fun. I don’t want people to take Native people seriously. I feel like that sounds so messed up, because we haven’t been taken seriously in cinema for so long. But, in a different way, I want people to have fun with Native films. I think the fact that we’re in a zombie film now is actually really cool, because it’s just fun. And I just want to see Native [people] not only in cinema, but Natives in the art world, creating stuff that doesn’t try to cater to anybody else, or doesn’t try to be something for a larger audience.
I think Jeff is amazing, because he really doesn’t give a shit. He just wants to make the films he wants to make. I took so many lessons from Jeff, like, “I wanted to see a Native zombie film, so I made it.” And, of course, there’s going to be so many themes, and so many ideas that you delve into that are going to enlighten a lot of people who are keen to understand what the Indigenous experience is like. But it also has to be an amazingly entertaining film. And I think Jeff does that with every film he makes, whether that’s his shorts or his features. He’s bringing Native people into such a crazy artistic world and vision that could exist with all the problems that we’re facing, but it can also just exist as like a crazy fun movie.
Ariel Fisher: Jeff has spoken about his experiences as a child during the 1981 raid of the Listuguj Mi’gmaq First Nation, what he saw, and how much of that is in this for him. How much of your own lived experience have you brought to the film and your characters?
Michael Greyeyes: My character Traylor is nothing like me, right? He’s a self-hating guy, and he’s a shitty dad. And his sons (Joseph) are sort of products of how poor a father he is. Forrest playing (Joseph), the better half of Traylor, and (Kiowa Gordon as) Lysol being sort of like the other side of that. I would be horrified and terrified to have a non-Indigenous director guide me through that process. I think it’s a daring kind of place to put a character, right? Because often we’re mythologized, we’re sanctified. You know, made more palatable. Jeff’s completely unafraid to put people that he knows on screen. And what’s amazing is that the cast are really brilliant all around me, so to play with people that have a consciousness about our representation, and how we can take risks inside this community — to me, that was the really, super exciting part. That’s why I want to do films like this.
Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers: (My character) Joss was so many Indigenous women I know. Indigenous women are superheroes, right? I think they hold our communities together. I know so many women [who] are single moms, and managed to work magic every day. My mother, for quite a while, was a single mom. And so I just tried my best to sort of emulate all of these incredibly strong women who don’t often have the time to dwell on any sort of self-pity or anything like that. They just move forward. And they gave all of their love to their children and community. So I was absolutely honored to play that role, and to see this very real depiction of a single mom, who’s educated and doing great things for her community under these extremely complicated circumstances. And it was really interesting to be paired with Michael playing Traylor, and seeing an Indigenous man represented in that way. Because it is a common story. I think Indigenous masculinity has been incredibly damaged by colonialism, and families have been fractured. And I think there’s a lot of repairing that needs to be done. So it was a really interesting relationship that we had on camera. And I think, again, Jeff was so brave in terms of throwing these very real, three-dimensional characters on screen.
Forrest Goodluck. (Photo by Giordano Ciampini)
Ariel Fisher: When Love, Simon came out, it was critically panned for being a bland, run-of-the-mill teen rom-com, but the LGBTQ+ community felt that was just as important as a grand political statement because we hadn’t had that kind of representation yet. Is that how you feel about this?
Forrest Goodluck: Yeah. I think I want to feel [like] everybody has a voice in cinema, and I think there’s a tendency to only fund certain stories about Indigenous people. And I think it’s so cool that my character in this film is with, like, a white girl who, like, nobody in the community likes. It’s so funny, because it’s like, that’s such a true little blip that I think young, Indigenous people today are experiencing, and like the fact that that’s in this film is great. And having those scenarios play out is really interesting to me. But I think having every film be remarkable from an Indigenous person’s perspective is going to be 100 times more enlightening than just the run of the mill film that [doesn’t have] everybody’s voices.
Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers: I think we’re at a really exciting point in time for Indigenous cinema; we’re on the precipice of something really exciting. You look at Black cinema in the U.S. and Get Out and Us are so exciting for so many reasons. And I really look forward to the day when we have that for Indigenous film. It was really great to go into the community in Listuguj and visit the school. All of us actors got to go and visit the Mi’gmaq youth there. And it was such an incredible feeling, knowing that these young people are going to be able to watch this film that’s wildly entertaining. Probably too violent for, like, the seven-year-olds! But to know that they’re going to be able to watch this film and hear their mother tongue being spoken in such a normalized, beautiful way. It just means so much. I think Jeff is very visionary in terms of not pandering to a convenient settler narrative of who Indigenous people should be. And, and the kinds of stories that are out there, that represent us — I think he does something wildly different.
Blood Quantum is now available to stream on Shudder in the US and the UK.
