Thursday, May 04, 2006

Slither



… or SLiTHER if we’re obeying the arbitrary typographical conventions of the film's branding.

Basically slugs from outer space get in through peoples mouths, attach to their brains and make them eat loads of rotting meat (and fresh meat actually, you know, whatever’s going to be more gross at the time) causing them get really big and explode in a shower of new slugs. It’s a solid genre movie, the genre being 70s/80s style body horror, think early Cronenberg and Brian Yuzna and people. It’s not particularly hardcore or nasty or anything but there’s some pretty icky blood and guts, predictably the rubber bits work best, the CG bits not so much. Tone-wise it’s more like the second action horror half on the Dawn of the Dead remake than the creepy/dark first half (same director by the way). Also it’s pretty funny in places, not like Evil Dead or Brain Dead though.

Anyway, the whole thing feels lovely and comfortable, I don’t know if it makes sense but I was thinking of it like a VHS film. The kind of thing you enjoy watching on grainy old video (sun bleached airbrush cover art) on a crap tele with the sun on the edge of the screen along with a batch of other B movies culled from the shelves of your local non Blockbuster video store during the summer holiday when you should really be outside being healthy and socializing and stuff.

Note worthy: The film stars Michael Rooker, the dad from Mall Rats, as the main bad guy and Nathan Fillion the captain from Serenity as the main good guy. Good casting!

IMDB