Glip glop flies, slime drips, the bingy bangs, and things gets ugly fast. Prepare to be entertained.
"Slither Review"
Michael Rooker- Grant Grant
Nathan Fillion- Bill Pardy
Elizabeth Banks- Starla Grant
Gregg Henry- Jack MacReady
Tania Saulnier- Kylie Strutemyer
Brenda James- Brenda Gutierrez
Directed by James Gunn
Screenplay by James Gunn
Distributed by Universal Pictures
Rated R for strong horror violence and gore, and language
Runtime- 96 minutes
Website: http://www.slithermovie.net/
An asteroid (or comet. Whichever) streaks across space and sets its sights on a little blue circle called "Earth." The fast moving space object enters the planet's atmosphere and crashes into the soft ground. The object, now much smaller than before, cracks open and… something comes out. What is it? And with that we have the opening of renowned screenwriter, Troma alumnus, and now first time director James Gunn's horror flick "Slither." The movie makes some what this reviewer will call "annoying choices" in tone, but overall it's actually pretty decent.
The flick stars Rowdy Burns hisself, Michael Rooker, as Grant Grant, a bald rich guy with a much younger wife (they very blonde Elizabeth Banks as Starla). The couple is having marital difficulties (Grant want to do some bing bang boom, and Starla just wants to lie in bed and, well, sleep). Grant gets upset and leaves the house, goes to a bad karaoke bar, and meets local sexpot Brenda (Brenda James). The two have history, and Brenda takes Grant out to the woods to show him a tree she carved their initials in way back when. She likes him, loves him, and now she wants to show it (heema homma). Despite the wifely frustrations and Brenda's bubbling sensuality, Grant doesn't want to dishonor his marriage vows and keeps Brenda at bay. While walking away, Grant comes upon a strange gooey mess in the grass. He does some further investigation, follows the trail left behind by the whatever, and finds a slick pile of globby skin. The globby object opens up and shoots a spiky dart thing into Grant's chest, freaking him out and making his body shake. He falls to the ground and the spiky dart travels to his brain. After a few moments, Grant comes to and decides to go home. The next morning, Starla is up and pining to make up with her husband (she plays some soft rock, she disrobes as Grant walks in, and the yeully shuffle starts). All seems back to "normal." So what the heck was that dart thing?
Grant starts having weird feelings. He rakes his yard and bags up the dead leaves, he goes to the supermarket and buys a whole truck load of red meat, and then puts a new Masterlock on the basement door. That night, he goes over to Brenda's (he skips a local shindig he promised to take his wife to, so he basically negated the morning woom woom). Brenda is still very much interested in engaging Grant's diddly so when he comes on strong to her she's very willing. She starts to disrobe and, well, Grant sprouts two tentacles from his stomach and rams them into her. Goo fooey.
While at the local hootenanny (honoring the start of the local hunting season) Starla meets up with the new chief of police, Billy (Nathon Fillion), and they flirt for a while. Billy liked Starla back in the day, wanted to marry her and whatnot, but she was more interested in what Grant had to offer (money, security, the chance to go to school to become a teacher). At least they have this moment. Starla goes home and finds Grant, now with some kind of head rash (he claims it's a bad reaction to a bee sting). Starla gets worried. Grant tells her he went to the doctor's office and got checked out. Starla calls the doctor the next day and finds out Grant did no such thing. Now she's really worried. She goes back home, breaks the lock off the basement door, and goes down. She finds some pretty nasty stuff (rotting meat, rotting dead animals from the neighborhood, etc). She comes back up to call the police.
Grant is waiting.
Grant attacks his wife, tries to ram the two tentacles into her gut, but she manages to wriggle away and get the help of the police (who just arrived in the nick of time). Grant sprouts a really long snake arm and runs away. Three days pass, the fields and farms in the area are littered with dead animals, and Grant keeps dragging the stuff he captures back to a house in the woods where he has Brenda chained up. The local cops, with the blessing of the foulmouthed mayor Jack MacReady (Gregg Henry with a great character name for all you Carpenter nerds), decide to suit up and go on a hunt for Grant or whatever the heck it is that is out in the town killing stuff (perhaps this reviewer is just imagining it, but he can swear that in the suiting up scene there's a bit of musical homage to "Predator"). And so the hunt, and the inevitable assault, begins.
Who is going down? Who is going to win? And are we ever going to really find out what that thing in the woods was?
Again, it's goo fooey time.
Michael Rooker is great as Grant the misunderstood jerk human and slime lizard pizza monster. He manages to evoke sympathy behind the amazing make up, even when completely covered in glistening glopola. His chemistry with Elizabeth Banks is profound enough to make the audience believe that these two people actually love one another. Banks does a decent enough job as the dutiful wife who really tries to make her marriage work despite the difficulties. It doesn't hurt being beautiful, either. Nathan Fillion also does a decent job as the flick's male hero. The fact that he doesn't try to play the hero as a total macho jerk speaks volumes about what he's trying to do. This guy may be a man of action (he is the police chief) but he probably doesn't have all of the answers. He will do his best, though. Gregg Henry gets all of the best lines ("If I wasn't about to shit my pants I'd be fucking fascinated") and uses his somewhat limited screen time to the best of his abilities. Tania Saulnier does a bang up job as the teen daughter of ranch owner Otis (William MacDonald) who has to deal with some nasty stuff in the bathroom (the most cringe inducing scene in the flick. In fact, the assault on the ranch house is probably the strongest scene in the entire movie). Everyone else does god stuff, too, as the hick townspeople trying to figure out what it is that they're dealing with (since the cops and the mayor have no clue, they're on their own). Lloyd Kaufman, co founder of Troma Studios, makes a cameo in the police station as a drunk (it's neat to see him up on the big screen, but it would have been neater to have him actually say something. Anything. He's listed as "Sad Drunk" in the credits. Wouldn't it have been better if he were a raging derelict, a drunk motormouth? Sure, it may have taken you out of the flick for a second, but it would have been a diversion we could have lived with. A much better diversion than the ones we are given).
Now the "annoying choices." It's commendable for Gunn to "break" two of the "understood" rules in movies (you can kill everyone and everything except dogs and children. Gunn does both) but, while we get some killer kid zombies in the flick's "zombie" phase, we don't get much in the way of killer dog and cat and rabbit zombies. Perhaps it was a budget thing to omit them, but it's certainly a missed opportunity in the end. Gregg Henry's character's arc ends with some confusion. We understand what happens to him, but it would have been more effective to just show it in full on gore glory. And the most egregious choice, the one that causes the flick to lose a full point in quality, is the end title music. The first song is so annoying, so awful, so out of place that it feels like it doesn't belong in the flick at all. The movie isn't the least bit snarky or hip and edgy. All of the humor generated by the characters is in the context of the story. There are no asides, no talking directly to the audience. So why have that song as the end title? And while we're on the whole end of the movie thing, that lingering shot of the street goes on far too long to have it lead to nothing. This reviewer wanted to see more of what happened in the rest of the town. If it's the end of the story, end of the movie, is it really the end?
So what do we have in the "doobage" department? We have plenty of slime, both from the comet monster and from the creepy shuffling zombies we encounter, a man gets slit up the front and his insides spill out everywhere, two great head shots, a fat guy with a very bad back rash, a giant infected flesh orgy, an exploding fat woman, and a bazillion little red worm slug things that may be the grossest thing in a horror movie in a long time (they put the space leech things in Fred Dekker's excellent "Night of the Creeps" to shame). Raw meat eating, dead animals, a mutant deer that looks like it escaped from the first "Resident Evil" movie, and a great excerpt from the beginning of "The Toxic Avenger" (Melvin Furd and Bozo for those of you in the know). Good stuff all around. And the CGI stuff doesn't look as much like CGI. Again, good stuff.
Should you see "Slither"? Definitely. You'll have a good time. You just won't be able to eat pizza or seafood for a day or two.
Go see it.
The 411: James Gunn makes a decent debut as a director with his horror flick “Slither,” which works more often than not and doesn’t annoy as much as it could have. It’s jokey, but it keeps the “inside” stuff to a minimum and piles on the gore goodies. Can’t wait for the DVD to see how much stuff they cut out.
