Slither (2006)

 

Before most people knew James Gunn from 'Guardians of the Galaxy', the man had already sharpened his skills making horrorfilms with quite a hefty dose of black humor injected. Just take a look at this one, which is one of those horrorfilms that is both quite icky and hilarious as the same time. Because be honest: who doesn't want to laugh and feel nauseous intermittently during a film?

'Slither' is quite a lot of fun, even if it isn't as great as Gunn's later work. 

Of course, the tale is set in a small town called Wheelsy. It really feels like one of those dead end-towns that the US is littered with. They have one event to look forward to during a year, and that's the start of the deer hunting season, which they kick off with the 'Deer Cheer'. 

The painful part is that this sort of thing isn't that far-fetched to start with. Heck, each municipality where I live has an annual stupid fest of some kind or other. You know, where the teens just go to get plastered and the adults for probably the same reason. And they're usually called stupid things like 'Sausage Fest' or something along those lines.

Anyway...

A small meteorite strikes on the outskirts of town. No one notices. But when Grant Grant (a gleefully morose Michael Rooker) discovers this after a little binge because his trophy wife Starla (Elizabeth Banks) doesn't put out, he is injected with a type of needle and then things quickly go funky. Grant gets an insatiable appetite for meat.

Yes, this also means that local pets go missing at an alarming rate. 

He begins to mutate, yet still keeps some semblance of his old self, as he can't bring himself to inseminate his wife, but does do this to a hapless waitress who then goes missing. Soon, however, Grant is discovered to be something akin to a Stretch Armstrong mixed with a squid and when chasing him, the local police discover the waitress, now the size of a monstrous tick. She bursts open and thousands of worm-like creatures slither away, infecting other residents who turn into zombie puppets. 

Now Starla, local sheriff Bill Pardy and a teenage girl are humanity's last hope... 

This film clearly wears its examples on its sleeve. The worms are very much a nod to 'Night of the Creeps', the zombies are akin to George Romero's work and the alien invasion angle is, well, pretty prevalent in sci-fi horror, I should say. Even an insane amount of characters are named after characters or makers of horror and sci-fi. The best example is mayor Macready, the brother of RJ Macready from 'The Thing'. 

While the film isn't always laugh out loud, the jokes and gags do land, but Gunn offsets this with some fun gore so you'll probably feel ashamed at times for laughing with some pretty gruesome things. They chose to do quite a lot with practical and gooey effects, except for a few shots that do stand out, unfortunately. But everything feels wonderfully sticky and disgusting. The Brenda-tick thing is probably the showstopper here. 

Egad, that looks painful. 

There are only a few things stopping this one from being an absolute hoot. For one, most of the characters are rather bland and uninteresting and unfortunately, those are our leads. Nathan Fillion and Elizabeth Banks are usually very good at what they do, but they are fairly grey in this one and that is a shame. Especially Fillion feels uninspired and he doesn't get a lot to do. Heck, the most entertaining ones are Michael Rooker and Gregg Henry as the asshole mayor. 

Also, the story is very predictable. It's some of the jokes that throw things off kilter, though.

'Slither' is a fun time if you're up for some worship of cult horror gems, but it definitely isn't for everyone. You might have to try and see if you can stomach this. If you can, then you've found another one of those films that you can enjoy, but it is far from perfect.