Slither

Rating: R16 – Contains Violence, Offensive Language & Horror.
Duration: 96 mins.
Genre: Horror.
Actors: Gregg Henry, Michael Rooker, Elizabeth Banks, Nathan Fillion, Jenna Fischer, Don Thompson.
Director: James Gunn.
Release Date: Available Now.

Slither is one of those movies that you’ll either get, or you wont.

Classified as a horror, and from the penmanship of James Gunn who wrote the fantastic re-make of Dawn of the Dead, you might be expecting an edge of your seats thrill ride.

But Slither is more than just a horror. It’s a comedic homage to the over the top horrors of the ‘70s and ‘80s. It’s as much a horror movie as Shaun of the Dead was.

It’s a B-Grade masterpiece, with plenty of laughs, buckets of blood, unbelievably ridiculous mutated human/alien hybrids and a cast of so-bad-they’re-good actors.

The humour and homage’s are everywhere, but there’s something else about this movie that strikes the observant; there’s no Hollywood A-List actors here. Everyone looks normal, no one is striving for perfection – ok, so one or two might, but not the whole world – and there’s no gratuitous horror movie nudity.

In fact, in one scene a teenage girl is soaking in a bath when one of the alien slugs attack, and she wrestles with it, in and out of the bath. The perfect opportunity for the director to pleas legions of adolescent males, but he doesn’t. The scene is set up with a fanatical precision that not once to we see any of those often named ‘naughty’ parts of the body.

Clearly this is an exceptionally crafted movie, whose ability at mocking its own genre is carefully wrapped up in B-Grade packaging that not everyone will notice the genious.

The only thing I’m not sure of after watching Slither is Nathan Fillion’s ability to act, I might just have to re-watch Firefly and Serenity before I come to a conclusion. Either he sucks at acting, or he’s incredibly good at acting bad…

Food for thought:
Why do people in movies always do stupid things?

Rent or Buy?
Buy it, the its-so-bad-its-good factor will probably make Slither a cult classic.