SLITHER: Favorite horror movie of the year!

Starring Nathan Fillion, Elizabeth Banks, Michael Rooker
Directed by James Gunn
Universal
(This review originally appeared in SCARS Magazine)

SLITHER was released in theaters March 31st, 2006. At the time of this writing, one week (and three days) later, I have seen it four times in the theater.

Sadly, it’s also ranked number 13 on this weekend’s top twenty box office totals.

While, thankfully, it’s faring better than LARRY THE CABLE GUY: HEALTH INSPECTOR and BASIC INSTINCT 2: HEALTH INSPECTOR, it still has nowhere to go but down, which is horribly sad because this film should have been number one for at least two weeks.

The fact that it wasn’t goes to prove one of two things: either the contingent of horror fans is much smaller than anyone would care to admit, or most horror fans are complete idiots who are not only lying hypocrites, but are also shiftless do-nothings who would rather go with their friends to see dreck like When a Stranger Calls than actual support real horror.

I’m beginning to feel like it’s the latter.

Before you get all up in arms, take a second and breathe—you know I’m right. Most horror fans sit around, bitching and moaning about the demise of real horror, about how much PG-13 horror sucks, etc. Just take a look at any horror mag’s letters page. They are filled with dozens of treatises on the current state, and demise of, horror.

Yet when a real horror masterpiece shows up at their front door—a film made by a true horror fan, for true horror fans, no less—it’s fucking regulated to number 13 on the B.O. charts. How else can it be explained—that’s right, it can’t.

Well, it’s too bad, because you missed out, Jack.

SLITHER is a true horror classic. If writer/director James Gunn set out to make the perfect horror film, well by God, he did it. Infusing the most fun horror films of the past 30 years—everything from Fred Dekker’s classic NIGHT OF THE CREEPS to the very underrated 1988 remake of THE BLOB to David Cronenberg’s SHIVERS (and possibly RABID), among others—into a gooey stew that leaves one wanted seconds, thirds and quite possibly, fourths, SLITHER still manages to be a beast all it’s own.

The small Florida town of Wheelsy is, like in any horror film, a quiet little berg where nothing much happens at all. The cops sleep in their cars, the karaoke bar is practically empty, everyone pretty much knows everyone else’s business and everyone is not without their own TWIN PEAKS-y quirks.

After being sexually rebuffed by his young wife Starla (Elizabeth Banks), Grant Grant (Michael Rooker), the town’s most notable well-to-do, wanders into the woods looking for some nookie with a bar-slut, but instead finds a slimy globule that promptly shoots a larval spear into him, which immediately goes to work on his brain. Next thing Grant knows, he’s building a nest in the basement and eating raw meat by the truckload.

Really, that’s the least of his problems.

In addition to an ever-mutating body—basically he’s becoming a giant squid—he’s also looking to unload a couple million slugs. The impregnation scene is the closest thing to live-action hentai as his wormy, tentacle-esque reproductive organs bolt out of his chest and fill up the aforementioned bar-slut.

Scared out of her mind, Starla calls up Chief of Police Bill Pardy (Nathan Fillion), who also happens to be carrying a torch for her, to investigate. Eventually Bill and his ragtag crew of badged ne’er-do-wells track him down to a field where the now completely bemollusked Grant is eating cows. They follow him to a barn where the bar-slut, looking like the John Carpenter version of Violet Beauregarde, literally explodes, unleashing a grue-filled torrent of foot-long slug-babies that want to do nothing more than get inside your mouth and possess your brain, turning you into a living zombie.

This is where SLITHER takes another unexpected turn, becoming a BODY SNATCHERS-type tale, as the remaining crew of Bill, Starla, a young girl and the Mayor, have to fight off the zombies, who are all share the same consciousness as Grant (shades of Eight from The Specials, an earlier screenplay of Gunn’s), who, in the film’s arguably nastiest scene, has become a Jabba the Hutt mass of flesh, absorbing the brain-possessed into his folds of fat, goo and slime spilling everywhere, like a white-trash variant on Brian Yuzna’s SOCIETY.

Also, there’s a slug-controlled deer that goes ape-shit.

First off, and I can’t say this enough—James Gunn, along with Rob Zombie and Eli Roth, may be the Holy Ghost to their Father and Son, respectively, in the Holy Trinity of New Mainstream Horror. Single-handedly, they are producing the best genre films theaters have seen since the late 80’s—full of shocks, gore and, most importantly, a fun, biting wit that never has to resort to utterly unsubtle, Kevin Williamson-style rapid-fire self-referentiality. This is especially true in Gunn’s case—Slither is honestly funny, with one hilarious line after another, but it never overshadows the horror part of the story. It may defuse it for a moment, but that only works to Gunn’s (and especially the audiences) advantage, because right when that guard has been let down and we’re sharing a self-effacing laugh with whoever’s on screen, along comes a jolt to take you right back into the horror. I firmly believe that Gunn’s screenplay, coupled with his brilliant revisionist take on DAWN OF THE DEAD, is the go-to guy for good time horror.

The cast is a chemically charged, classic ensemble. Michael Rooker balances Grant Grant with an appropriate level of asshole and pathos—he’s a jerk, sure, but a jerk you can’t help but feel sorry for. It’s Rooker’s role of a lifetime, and yes, I think it’s an even better performance than that of his in HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER. To convey actual emotion under, as I’m sure you’ve seen from stills, layers and layer of make-up is the mark of a great actor.

On the flipside, Nathan Fillion, who’s natural “aw, shucks” smart-assness made SERENITY one of the best films of 2005, does the same here. The guy is just plain likable. He’s very much an old school, Harrison Ford-as-Indiana Jones type hero, who can make a quick, self-deprecating quip while simultaneously laying the smack down. He’s very easily a normal guy who’s just placed in an extraordinarily fucked-up situation.

But the true breakout star here is Elizabeth Banks. A minor crush of mine since her appearance as Betty Brant in the SPIDER-MAN films, her Starla is a classic take on the screaming, running, scared-out-of-her-mind horror girl, which, I’ll be honest, is a damn nice change of pace. Not to put down the “strong ladies” of genre film, but I’ve seen too many films where the hero is, of course, the resourceful woman who, besides being typical Maxim masturbatory fodder, usually unveils a MacGuyver-level skill for outsmarting the monster in the third reel. (Sorry to bring it up again, but look at the remake of WHEN A STRANGER CALLS for a most ridiculous example of this uber-politically correct trend.) This normalcy is what makes Starla’s character so endearingly honest—she’s poor white trash who married Grant for a better life—and honestly loves him, I believe—and is willing to stand by her man. At least until he tries to shoot her up with slugs. With the exception of a quick head-spattering by the side of the road, there’s no scenes where all of a sudden she’s strapped like Lara Croft, doing flips around the room while firing twin automatics, in slow-motion, as if in a John Woo film. She acts and reacts as any normal person in this situation would.

And the special effects—let’s just say that if SLITHER does not get an Oscar for them, I’ll be taking out the Academy, one-by-one, DR. PHIBES-style.

So, in the end, SLITHER is a perfect horror film. It’s the horror film that genre fans have been clamoring for for years. By now, it’s already out of the theaters, never to return. But you have one more chance—buy it on DVD. Buy two copies. Make it the best-selling horror DVD ever.

Just, whatever you do, do not miss this one again, you lazy bastards.