SLITHER

SLITHER
By Ken Leicht

I’ve never been much of a horror-comedy guy. I prefer my horror straight with some humor but nothing too wacky. If the horror isn’t scary at least a little than what’s the point? Until now, the best mix of comedy and monsters has been TREMORS. TREMORS was the only film I’ve ever seen which managed to perfectly balance the humor and the monster stuff without being too wacky. Until now, TREMORS was the standard. Now SLITHER has come along and it is probably the new standard for the comedy horror genre…at least as I prefer it anyway.

From a somewhat unexpected source, James Gunn of Scooby Doo movie fame, SLITHER tells the story of a really bad alien force that has designs on stripping the earth of all it has. Small town big shot jerk Grant Grant, played by Michael Rooker has an unfortunate encounter with a small meteorite which unleashes a tiny something which promptly jumps inside him and takes him over. Soon afterwards, he attacks his would be mistress and sends two tentacles into her body and filling her up with something. Soon, she is so hungry she could eat the world…and seemingly does. She turns into a giant blob which soon explodes with worms which go and try to attach themselves to any human they can find. The only ones standing between the alien and its plans to eat the world are Sheriff Pardy (played by Nathan Fillion of SERENITY); Starla, Grant’s confused wife and childhood sweetheart of Pardy’s; and a teenage girl Kylie, who is the only survivor of her infected family.

James Gunn apparently learned a lot watching the effects heavy Scooby Doo films and his own scripted remake of Dawn of the Dead. The technical side of the film is spot on. And the characters are fairly well drawn. The nods and winks to other films are present but not in an obvious or annoying ways (like naming a hardware store Romero Hardware or some other stupid shit). I particularly liked the part where infected townspeople are absorbed by the Grant monster in a manner that is in the spirit of Rob Bottin’s monsters in Carpenter’s version of THE THING.

SLITHER is just so cool and so much fun I really don’t want to talk too much about it so as to ruin it. Not too many people saw the film during its release in March no doubt due to Universal’s less than stellar (again) marketing campaign. The folks at UNI continue to FAIL to market their sci-fi horror offerings beyond the faithful cult audiences. Films like SHAUN OF THE DEAD, SERENITY and now SLITHER should have been bigger hits than they were. Instead they are cult classics…like TREMORS. When SLITHER makes it to video, be sure to check it out if you haven’t and watch it again if you have. It, along with THE DESCENT, is the two best genre films of the year so far.