Slither

If there's one thing that most horror movies are missing today it's fun. With so many films in the genre taking themselves way too seriously, I'm almost starting to miss the silly fun that the 80s slasher flicks provided. Slither tries to fill the void by taking an intentionally tongue-in-cheek approach to a cliched B-movie storyline of your average "Anytown U.S.A." being invaded by forces beyond our world. It strives to join the ranks of such horror comedy films as Tremors and Shaun of the Dead, but it falls a little short of those two cult classics. That certainly doesn't mean writer-director James Gunn (2004's Dawn of the Dead remake) doesn't try his hardest. Slither just takes too long to get to where its going, doesn't quite have the manic energy to be memorable, and aside from one or two scenes, never quite delivers the tension that needs to go along with the laughs.

When an alien meteorite crashes on Earth carrying bizarre parasitic creatures within it, it happens to land in a forest nearby the sleepy town of Wheelsy. The first person to discover the crash site, and to become the unwilling host to the alien that traveled on the meteorite, is town loudmouth Grant (Michael Rooker from Mallrats). His behavior changes quite suddenly as the alien makes it way inside him to his brain, and soon Grant's lovely wife Starla (Elizabeth Banks) begins to notice the striking physical abnormalities that start popping up all over his body. Grant, now under the control of the parasitic monster, tries vainly to throw suspicion off of himself, but the local animals are starting to go missing or being found mutilated, and all the evidence points to him. By the time the local town police officer Bill Pardy (Nathan Fillion from Serenity) gets involved, Grant has mutated into a completely grotesque form, and is well underway in carrying out the invasion plan of the alien now controlling him.

The plan in question revolves around the alien Grant infecting a young woman named Brenda (Brenda James), causing her to mutate into a bloated mass of flesh that stores hundreds of other parasitic slug-like creatures within her. When the creatures are released from their host, they will spread about the town, infecting anyone they come in contact with. Their victims will turn into soulless zombies who live only to serve the creatures, and slowly conquer the world. A small band of survivors who, besides Bill and Starla, include the outspoken Mayor of the town (Gregg Henry) and a teenage girl who lost her entire family to the monsters (Tania Saulnier) must now find a way to fend off the invasion before it spreads beyond their town.

A loving tribute to sci-fi horror, Slither certainly knows its audience and, for the most part, gives them what they want. The film uses its cliched invasion plot as a launching pad for numerous sequences that are so over the top in their gore and violence, you almost laugh at the sheer twistedness of it all. Writer-director Gunn certainly revels in every last splatter and causes the blood effects to almost splash against the camera in a couple scenes. Just by reading those three sentences, you should already know if Slither is the movie for you. The film is darkly comic, bold in its depiction of outrageous gore, and even manages to generate a few genuine scares. The main sequences that stick out in my mind is Starla's discovery of her alien husband's secret basement room, and the scene where teenage survivor Kylie must escape from her family after they have been infected by the slug creatures. As the town continues to be taken under the control of the invaders, the tension builds even more as hundreds of zombie-like humans patrol the streets. It's all a lot of fun for anyone who grew up on these kind of films, and it'd be even more fun if everything I just described didn't happen during the last 4o minutes or so of the movie, which leaves almost a good 55 minutes of meandering set-up before it finally picks up the pace.

It's quite unfortunate that the film wastes so much time before we get to see what we paid for. It tries to cover up this fault by giving its characters a variety of zingy one-liners to throw back and forth at each other, but most of them fell flat with me. It wasn't until the movie started to crank up the energy level a little during the last half that I started to have fun, and even then, Slither seems to be holding itself back a little. We never quite become emotionally attached with the characters like we should. Earlier in this review, I mentioned Shaun of the Dead; a hilarious and well thought-out comedic horror film that not only knew how to give its characters depth, but also focused on their relationships when they weren't battling flesh-eating zombies. In comparison, the cast of Slither is quite shallow as we learn so little about them. Maybe if they'd stop shooting off one-liners that are usually based around obscenities, we could get to like them a bit more. The script seems more concerned with being clever and witty only. It does hint at some possibly intriguing characterizations, such as Starla's increasingly tricky relationship with her husband who has become the leader of this deadly invasion, but not enough is done with this idea. Instead of interesting, the characters come off as one-note, trite, and way too clever for their own good since they seem to be slinging sarcastic and witty comments around like they're going out of style.

That's not to say the cast doesn't seem to be having any fun. They know what kind of a movie they're in, and they seem to be relishing in it as much as the creative staff. The only exception is Elizabeth Banks, who wisely does not overplay her character, and comes across as sympathetic in her portrayal of Starla. It must have been difficult playing a woman whose main emotional struggle is that her husband has turned into a massive blob-like alien monstrosity and is now infecting the entire town, but she pulls it off, and is even able to share a couple of strangely honest moments with her mutated spouse. I know that Nathan Fillion has a large fanbase due to his work on the cult TV show Firefly, but I personally found him lacking in personality here. Don't get me wrong, he does enough to get the job done, but his character and his portrayal just did not interest me in the way that I thought it should. The only other real stand out is Brenda James, whom I admire for simply being able to get through her final scene with a straight face. I'm sure they got some great outtakes from the scene right before she is literally ripped apart during the process of giving birth to the swarm of alien slugs.

In the end, I think I admire Slither more for what it tried to do than for what it actually achieved. The movie just isn't as fun as it should be for most of its running time, and by the time the goo and the gore effects start to fly, it's over so quickly that it almost seems to be a tease. Maybe I expected more given its premise and the pre-release hype that the film received in the genre community. Chalk it up to inflated expectations if you must, but I still think Slither is less the film it should be, and I would think this even if I wasn't looking forward to it the past couple weeks. It's a real shame. I was ready for some fun, and just didn't get as much as I had hoped.

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