Jason Bourque will never forget the day a bag full of chickens attached to a tractor’s muffler exploded in his face on his family’s property when he was seven.
“It was full-on country living,” says Bourque. At the time, his mother was attempting to “put the chickens out of their misery” by killing them with exhaust, after the dog got into the chicken coop.
It’s one of many memories he has of growing up in a small New Brunswick community, which inspired Black Fly, his long-awaited independent feature making its Victoria debut at Cinecenta on Tuesday.
The film was inspired mostly by Bourque’s gradual realization that the charismatic stranger who lived down the road from his family after they moved to the rural Kingston Peninsula was Noel Winters, a notorious serial killer.
The predator’s identity came to light after neighbourhood kids stumbled across a couple of garbage bags containing dismembered human remains. Other bodies were later found buried near the home.
Bourque was also haunted by memories of a hermit-like neighbour who was apparently involved in a mysterious hunting accident.
“That kind of stuff left an indelible mark on me. So much of this is based on this one period I had growing up between five and 14 on the Kingston Peninsula,” says Bourque.
It motivated him to write and direct his unsettling backwoods thriller about secrets unearthed during the reunion of two estranged, troubled brothers whose father died in a hunting accident and whose mother committed suicide.
“This kind of stuff is so difficult to write unless you’ve experienced it.”
When Bourque, 42, returns to Victoria to present his passion project and participate in a Q&A session after its 7 p.m. screening on Tuesday, he will have come full circle.
It was here that the Vancouver-based filmmaker and UVic fine arts grad wrote the core story for the film, then titled Black Fly Summer, one of four entries in a horror series he was developing here in the late 1990s.
Bourque directed music videos, short films and commercials in Victoria during that period, before establishing his career as a prolific writer and director of TV movies, disaster flicks and documentaries, notably Shadow Company, Dreams of Flight and Music for Mandela.
As busy as he was, he never abandoned his determination to make his labour of love on his own terms when funding was available and the stars aligned.
Producer Ken Frith, his classmate at Vancouver Film School, was the first person to read the script. Frith stayed the course, eventually teaming up with Vancouver producer Robyn Wiener (American Mary).
“It’s been 18 years and it has definitely evolved,” says Bourque, whose film was pre-sold to Superchannel and funded by Rogers Telefund and Telefilm Canada, which is touting it as “Canada’s Winter’s Bone.”
Black Fly is much different from the kind of film he likely would have made back then, admits Bourque, who grew up on horror fare such as the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street series.
“It was good timing for me to make it later in my career,” he says, noting he has since been more influenced by films such as The History of Violence and Straw Dogs.
“Coming from just before the Tarantino generation, I would have glorified the violence more, but knowing it would reach a broader audience now, I wanted to focus more on the aftermath of the violence.”
Strikingly photographed by Mahlon Todd Williams at locations in Pitt Meadows and on Denman Island, Black Fly does feature some unsettling violence, yet most is implied.
Its chief strengths include the remarkable performances Bourque coaxes from Dakota Daultby as Jake, the emotionally scarred younger brother; Matthew MacCaull as Noel, his explosive, hard-drinking sibling, and Christie Burke as Noel’s cipher-like girlfriend, Paula.
It also benefits from the palpable, slow-burn tension Bourque generates as the fallout from the men’s troubled past ignites an ominous sense of paranoia and impending danger.
“The actors had to go to some dark places and there were times Christie and Matt would be improvising with some hellish, crazy stuff coming out of their mouths,” recalls Bourque, who encouraged it.
“It’s a relatively simple story, but the action has more to do with morals versus the family bond. I loved having characters who were so multi-faceted and complex.”
While MacCaull’s mulleted character appears decidedly unhinged, the actor portraying him “is the nicest guy on the planet,” says Bourque, who shot the film in just 14 days, mostly with just one camera.
He says he originally hoped to shoot Black Fly in Victoria 15 years ago, with Brant Pinvidic, the Victoria-born TV producer who collaborated with Bourque on the reality series Party Quest, slated to play Noel and actor-screenwriter Dominika Wolski attached as Paula. It was one of many attempts to get it off the ground before the film was championed by Telefilm Canada.
While most of Black Fly was shot in Pitt Meadows, he says he couldn’t resist crossing the pond for a weekend shoot on Denman Island, seduced by its quirky coastal personality.
“Denman reminds me of Kingston Peninsula in the sense there are similar elements,” says Bourque, who shot on a property where a woman collects old buses. “It’s like Road Warrior meets hippies.”
The film still has strong connections to Victoria, he adds, recalling how Interview with a Hitman, a short film he shot locally and rented out while working at That’s Entertainment video, was the start of it.
“There are elements and images I can trace back from my entire career to studying visual arts and film history at UVic, and my photography back then.”
What: Black Fly
Where: Cinecenta, UVic SUB
When: Jan. 20, 7, 9:15 p.m.
Info: cinecenta.com, 250-721-8365