Thus far, writer/ director James Gunn has not been a very good filmmaker. His resume is dotted with admirable failures and downright pitiful monstrosities. “Dawn of the Dead” wasn’t a horrible flick, but that has a lot more to do with director Zack Snyder’s style rather than Gunn’s screenplay. Oh, and he didn’t just write the first “Scooby Doo.” He wrote both of them.
Pause for effect… and moving on.
However, given complete reigns over his own vision, Gunn has crafted an excellent piece of spoof-horror in “Slither.” Drawing on his status as a Troma Films veteran, he has put together a high-level, gross-out flick that is entirely watchable. The script is nothing new, but it hums along with such a twisted verve and love for the genre that viewers can’t help but have a hell of a time experiencing it.
The best spoofs or satires are usually at least somewhat affectionate toward their target. “Slither” is one of those films. Gunn is a self-proclaimed horror nerd and “Slither” is dripping with fanboy love. It takes an overused premise, that of a small town in the United States being invaded by an outer space menace, couples it with a zombie flick and attempts to get the genre back on track from there. It’s able to exist as both a straight horror comedy and a satire on over-cinamatized, alien species.
For the most part, it succeeds. One of the more interesting facets of “Slither” is that it actually makes zombies fun again for a brief moment. Zombies are the most overused horror villain in all of entertainment right now. The concept should have died for a while with the superlative “Shaun Of The Dead,” but apparently no one got that memo. “Slither” works inasmuch as it strips the concept bare and shows it can still be vital in limited use.
Cliches fill every inch of cinematic space here, but that’s kind of its charm. There’s the small town sheriff, his dream girl (but she’s married to another man!), and a slick two-faced mayor. There’s even the town skank.
Gunn’s got a lesbian sheriff’s deputy, though. At least that was new.
These characters may be cookie-cutter, but they’re played with such a uniform excellence and tongue-in-cheek flair that it makes the viewer feel like he or she is taking part in something unique. Nathan Fillion as sheriff Bill Pardy, in particular, continues to be perfect in movies no one is watching. He’s quickly becoming the go-to guy when it comes to the rough around the edges anti-hero type, mostly because he gives the characters a more well-rounded feel just by virtue of his charm. Go watch him in “Serenity” right now if you only know him from “Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place” or not at all. He deserves far better than he’s received in his career so far.
Elizabeth Banks (of “The- 40-Year-Old Virgin” nymphomaniacal infamy) shows that she’s got a great deal of range, even affecting a decent southern accent to play Fillion’s romantic foil Starla Grant. She’s the reluctant good girl heroine in every horror movie you’ve ever seen, but in keeping with the apparent theme of the picture, she’s at least appealing enough to hold attention. She’s appropriately adorable when the script needs her to be and handles her short action sequences without skipping a beat. When she becomes a (blatantly telegraphed) alien-monster-fighting badass near the end of Act I, she effortlessly switches between farm girl innocence and a “Buffy The Vampire Slayer” gory vengeance. She’s a lot of fun to watch and provides some of the film’s best moments.
As Gregg Henry’s pitch-perfect, slimy mayor Jack MacReady says as Banks impales a zombie, “the bitch is hard core.”
“Slither” is retracing the long-trodden paths of creators like Dario Argento and early Peter Jackson. It’s one of those horror flicks where a youngish trailer park mother inexplicably sits around watching Troma movies. Gunn seems to know exactly what he wanted from his little movie, and he nails it with expert timing and zeal.
“Slither” is definitely worth the hour and a half it takes to get through it. The acting is excellent, the laughs come fast and the violence is brutal in its over-the-top buckets of blood mentality. It’s probably the most fun you can have in a theater right now. For all its cliches and faults, it’s actually one of the best movies of the young year. Just don’t expect to walk away with anything new.
Spoof-horror flick ‘Slither’ charms with cliched plot lines
Daily Emerald
April 5, 2006
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