Slither is a campy horror movie directed by James Gunn and starring Nathan Fillion, Elizabeth Banks, Michael Rooker, Gregg Henry, Don Thompson, Tania Saulnier, and Jennifer Copping.
The broad strokes of the movie bear some resemblance to Night of the Creeps; a meteor crashes near the tiny town of Wheelsy, South Carolina. Said meteor carries an alien creature that infects local rich dude Grant Grant (Rooker), who proceeds to turn his would-be mistress Brenda (Brenda James) into a womb for horrible little slug-creatures. Grant gets discovered turning into a monster and pursued into the night, but leads his pursuers straight to Brenda, who explodes. The slugs rampage through the town, slithering into people's mouths and turning them into zombies connected in a hive-mind to Grant. The intent is to do what he's done on multiple worlds - turn some into wombs for more worms, absorb the zombies into a big flesh-mass, and everything else is meat.
Over on the human side of things, we have Grant's wife Starla (Banks), now a teacher at the local high school but once with ambitions towards stardom, and our square-jawed leading man Bill Pardy (Fillion), the local police chief who's been crushing on Starla since they were kids. All of the other human characters either become worm-head zombies or are otherwise taken over by the Grant-monster, except for Kylie (Saulnier), who managed to avoid getting wormed thanks to her kickass fingernail job (but does wind up mind-melding long enough to learn the creature's true nature and history, so she can info-dump at us, which is nice).
I really enjoy this movie, though if I'm honest I'm forced to admit that it's not especially good. It's a James Gunn flick, though, which means it doesn't pull punches - everyone in town dies, children and dogs included - but the camp horror nature of the movie means that it doesn't ask us to wallow in pathos. Both Banks and Fillion play the unfortunate leads with flair; Fillion is basically play Mal Reynolds with a South Carolina accent and a more refined moral compass, but that works. We get fun side roles from Gunn regular Gregg Henry as the foul-mouthed mayor of Wheelsy and Thompson and Copping as deputies, but the real meat (lol) of the movie is Michael Rooker taking us through the transformation of Grant Grant. Grant is kind of a tool, but he's not a bad guy per se, and his love for his wife allows him to exhibit some moments of humanity even after he becomes a flesh squid. (I am reminded of Gunn's depiction of Starro in The Suicide Squad; we'll get there.)
The effects are squishy and gory and slurpy and when they're practical, they hold up nicely. Unfortunately a lot of them aren't, especially the worms slithering around in a mass, and the CGI is kind of weak. The movie is at its best when we get the characters running from or fighting the worm-head zombies, all of whom stagger around like Romero zombies but spit acid and all speak with Grant's intonation and vocabulary, which adds a nice intelligence and menace to creatures that are usually pretty un-threatening unless you're surrounded by them.
Like I said, it's a lot like Night of the Creeps (it very much feels like a love letter, right down to reference other horror movies in an overt way - the mayor's name is R. J. Macready, for cryin' out loud), and it's nice to see Nathan Fillion star in a movie.
My Grade: B+
Rewatch Value: Medium-high
Next up: The Snake People
No comments:
Post a Comment