Most people know that I enjoy bad horror and action movies. They are entertaining and don’t take up too much time in my brain. I like films that make me think too, but I have been way more into being entertained lately than thinking. This brings me to Slither. A friend of mine had advanced tickets to go see it and I was totally down. I knew that it was going to at least be fun and probably pretty gross, but nothing could have prepared me for the humor in the film.
What I enjoyed was that right off the bat it knew what it was all about. It knew that it wasn’t going to take itself seriously and never made any attempts to do so. It’s nice to see something that is a total departure from how serious I feel hollywood has become. It’s pretty much a horror comedy, which is one of my favorite sub genres. James Gunn, the writer/director for the film is a Troma alumni so I wouldn’t expect anything different from him. It’s much much better than any Troma film that I have ever seen though.
Slither is incredibly well written, and some of the lines are absolutely to die for. Such as “You’re like chocolate for the eyes” and “It’s like finding a needle in a fuckstack” or “His arm was all bendy”. Another nice thing was the nod to Tremors. The Highschool’s name was pretty much the same as Fred Ward’s character. So the movie was made by a horror fan for the horror fan.
Nathan Fillion (SERENITY, FIREFLY) was pretty excellent as the small town sherriff. Kind of goofy, but at the right moments very brave. Fillion has fun in front of a camera and reminds me of Kurt Russel in that respect; just a guy who doesn’t take himself too seriously and as a result is a pretty fine actor. Gregg Henry (If you watch television you have probably seen him somewhere) was also priceless as the angry drunken Mayor. He is such an asshole the whole time, “Martians is a general term for Outerspace Fuckers” (or something along those lines).
On the gross out scale it’s pretty high. Tentacles are always gross, especially when one of them cuts a guy in half. I never get over the novelty of someone falling apart when they are cut down the middle. The slugs are really gross too and take over people through oral penetration (yes I just wrote that). The zombies that the slugs make people turn into are also pretty gross and there are some good and bloody feasting scenes. Some of the stuff is a little over board, yet totally forgivable.
I would probably buy this movie and put it in the “cheer me up when i am sad” collection, right along with Big Trouble in Little China. Which is saying a lot. Do yourself a favor and see it with a friend. It will be hard to stop laughing, if you’re with the right friend that is.
Tags:
Slither
Horror
Movie Review
