Starring: Nathan Fillion, Elizabeth Banks, Michael Rooker Directed by: James Gunn
As Halloween fast approaches, every movie theatre and cable channel will start to devote more and more time to the bastard genre of the film world, the horror movie. Many stars have appeared in them. Many good directors have cut their teeth by making them. Still, no genre seems to get less recognition for good work than horror. I blame Sorority Row.
Slither is, as many of the better horror films have to be, more than just a horror film. Horror/Action, Horror/Comedy, Horror/Thriller, Horror/Hip-Hop (thanks Snoop), pick a genre and slap it on the end of horror and it has probably already been made (stop dragging your feet Bollywood). Slither pulls off the horror/comedy in a way that would make Sam Raimi proud.
The movie opens the same as a hundred movies before; an object from space comes crashing down in Small Town, USA. Of course this object contains a small slug like creature that is bound and determined to take over our planet. Now let me answer your question before you ask. No, this is not an allegory on our current immigration concerns. Why would you even think that?
The creature starts to take control of the residents of Nowhere, USA. Some people are used as massive wombs so the creature can reproduce, and others are used as food. No, this is not a social commentary on America’s love affair with making babies and eating our body weight at each meal. Let’s focus people.
Some people live, some people die. It’s a horror movie, the story you know already. The real strength of Slither is in the cast. More often than not, horror movies are merely a stepping stone for some drama club rejects who thinks that showing your boobs while getting while getting your head cut off is their ticket into real movies. And to be fair, we all loved Dame Judi Dench in Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan. However, Nathan Fillion and Elizabeth Banks actually add a certain degree of credibility and comedic timing that is rarely seen in horror movies. They manage to do this subtly, keeping the movie just out of the clutches of your Army of Darkness slap-stick nature.
One last thing I have to mention. I am very grateful to this movie for excluding something that too often ruins a movie, technology. Not technology in the production of the film, but in the film itself. No one is running around with their cell phone calling for help, or looking up “slug aliens” on Google. New technology makes the world seem small in the movies. “Let me just Skype this professor in Mumbai to figure out how to kill the monsters while you text the National Guard.” The world is large, and Genericville, USA is just a small part of it, and the characters aren’t trying to save everyone, they are just trying to survive.
In closing, let me see if I can do this right, SLTHR MMLMAO ITS GR8 & SCRY TNSTAAFL!
Translation: Slither made me laugh my ass off, it’s great and scary, there’s no such thing as a free lunch!
Seriously, there is an actuall text abbreviation for “there’s no such thing as a free lunch”, look it up. I want you to use that sometime, and see if anyone has any idea what the hell you’re talking about.
Written by Drew Martin