Based on that description, one would imagine the film would be full of scary moments and gruesome surprises, yet in the end I can’t recall being all that terrified. The movie also has a darkly comic bent, although it wasn’t all that amusing either. Was I nauseated? At times. Disturbed? A bit, although probably not for the reasons writer/director James Gunn had intended. Scared? Not really.
Part of the problem may be that the concept of this type of alien invasion has been done so often, that the culture has become desensitized to it. Let me put it this way: at this point, if a character leans over a pulsating alien larva sack, I doubt any audience is going to be surprised when something springs out and gets him. Once you’ve seen it happen to Kane in “Alien,” everything else just kind of pales in comparison.
Similarly, with the flood of zombie flicks that have been released in recent years (from genre pioneer George A. Romero’s “Land of the Dead” to “28 Days,” the quirky English “Shaun of the Dead,” and the Gunn penned remake of Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead” to name a few), it’s kind of hard to get worked up over watching lumbering automatons menace townspeople anymore. All the bloodshot eye makeup and decaying prosthetics in the world can’t make up for a genre that has been run into the ground lately- it’s as if Hollywood just can’t allow the undead rest in peace for some reason.
As I said though, although “Slither” fails to live up to the horror moniker, it attempts to make up for it with endless amounts of gore and goo. In this film, buckets of blood are splattered, alien appendages flail around, characters balloon up to Veruca Salt-like proportions, giant slugs inch their way across floors… if nothing else, TROMA alumnus Gunn is certainly not afraid of going for the gross-out gags. Some of them do hit the mark, so if that’s your cinematic cup of tea, be my guest.
However, a few of the disgusting scenes do have troubling undertones to them. In particular, there are moments during an impregnation scene between Michael Rooker and Brenda James, which in another film from another genre would clearly be sexual assault. While I’m not going to say that such material is out of place within the horror genre (not my idea of fun viewing by any stretch though), the scene is so genuinely disturbing that placing it in a film that has been touting it’s satirical, gallows humor edge seems a bit crass on Gunn’s part.
For what it’s worth though, the performances in “Slither” are all quite good for the material- Nathan Fillion comes off the best as the low key sheriff in whatever backwater Bamasippi town we happen to be in for this picture. He also gets the best of the comedic material, trading one-liners with the townsfolk. Elizabeth Banks and Tania Saulnier also fare well in the designated scream-queen roles. And, if you’re going to get people to play the scenery-chewing rich jerks in your B-Horror flick, you can’t do much better than Rooker and Gregg Henry, the working-man’s James Woods.
In all though, it’s unfortunate that all their hard work hasn’t yielded a better film. The pieces all seem to be there, but they never come together properly to make the puzzle. As a whole, “Slither” is just not inventive enough to be scary, clever enough to be funny, or good enough to be worth watching.
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