Director: James Gunn
Writer: James Gunn
Starring: Nathan Fillion, Elizabeth Banks, Michael Rooker
Runtime: 92 mins.
2006
I've been watching a lot of "bad movies" recently. These include Troll 2, Mystery Men, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight, 500 MPH Storm, and now Slither. I'm realizing more and more that there are a million different kinds of "bad movies". Two different "bad movies" can have varying degrees of self-awareness, budget, craftsmanship, homage, scorn for the audience, fun had by all, etc. etc. So it's damaging to reduce any movie to the distinction of "bad movie" except as some sort of vague genre marker that needs to be elaborated on.
Slither is a bad movie only in that it is a send-up of classic schlocky horror. Despite the structural similarities and nods to genre tropes and horror standbys, Gunn's film is a hilarious, intelligent commentary on gender roles and the culture of smalltown America, complete with deft acting, pacing, camerawork, and effects. I like it a lot.
I watched the movie years ago, in high school. It came Mr. K-recommended, like many of the other excellent movies I have experienced. I watched it with a friend, and we enjoyed ourselves. It was funny, and it was gross, and that was enough for us. Going into my second viewing, I had a vague pleasant memory of Slither as a simple, diverting film. I was kind of wrong about that.
This is why repeat viewings are so important. There are hundreds of movies I watched in my childhood or in high school that I just know I couldn't do justice to at the time. Years and experience often change a movie entirely. You may as well be watching something new. You are watching something new.
Slither is diverting, but it is not simple. The dialogue is tight, quick--to repeat an adjective, deft. The suspense is skillful. But most of all, I was blown away by the themes of the movie. The gross-out gore (often involving various kinds of phalluses penetrating various kinds of receptacles) is excellent, and I've been resisting the urge to post images out of context, because I think it's best for you to discover them within the film. But it isn't just toward the end of grossing you out. Slither presents a really fantastic rumination on gender roles, the male gaze, animal instincts versus cultural norms, and how the male possession of the female body benefits nobody.
Some plot basics: the primary antagonist is an alien slug creature that arrives on earth in a meteor. After an encounter with a redneck named Grant Grant (played convincingly by The Walking Dead's Michael Rooker), Grant Grant becomes... shall we say... colonized. The slug wants to replicate. It's a sort of Invasion of the Body Snatchers slash zombie movie deal. Now, Grant Grant was a patriarchal pig to begin with--he is shown early on trying to pressure his trophy wife, Starla (Elizabeth Banks), into sex--but Gunn (who is helming Marvel's upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy) doesn't take the easy route and make Grant Grant absolutely despicable. He's a redneck asshole combined with a sinister alien parasite, yet somehow, somehow, he manages to come across as sympathetic. This is all a part of the film's subtle commentary--even the most corrupt patriarchal assholes are victims of the patriarchal system. What other horror movie has the responsibility not to out and out condemn the nasty redneck character?
This thematic subtlety finds its way into all of the characters' arcs, from our protagonist Bill Pardy (Nathan Fillion)'s forlorn bravado to Starla Grant's struggle for agency and self-determination.
One of the most difficult feats for intelligent genre fiction to accomplish is hewing close enough to the recognizable structures enough to feel familiar, while still innovating on those structures enough to avoid the pitfalls of stereotype, cliche, and archaism. A good example of successful genre fiction is the semi-recent Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, which performs all of the necessary over-the-top action movie stimulation, all the while giving the audience enough sly winks and nods to let us know that the filmmakers are in on the ridiculousness of it all. An excellent example of successful genre fiction is Skyfall, which thematizes stale action genre tropes as expectations that Bond's character struggles to live up to, to the point that they affect the plot.
Slither masterfully navigates the horror movie tropes that it lives within, and occasionally escapes. To wit: there are two separate attractive-women-in-shower/bathtub scenes (one referenced in the above picture), as we've come to expect from bad horror. However, these scenes manage not to be exploitative; they are about far more than BOOBIES AND SUSPENSE! One is about the intimacy of a marital relationship, and the other is about the vulnerability of an angry teenager. The focus is on the female body as object only insofar as that is the theme being explored in the scene, such that in my opinion, the scenes end up being fairly tasteful.
There are also several not-even-that-symbolic depictions of rape and other sorts of brutality. But Gunn doesn't hate his audience. He doesn't make you feel terrible for enjoying his movie, but he does implicate you regarding the atrocities of the social structure that we inhabit. I find that amazing.
A horror movie that is both scads of fun and thematically implicating is rare (off the top of my head I am dredging up only The Cabin in the Woods). On top of that, everything I've mentioned so far is not the only interesting theme the movie explores. I hadn't even registered this, but this brief review pegs Slither as "a critique of the American heartland's boundless gluttony." Mr. Singer is right about that reading, too.
If you have any passing interest in horror, and can stand some really entertaining gore, I recommend Slither. You'll laugh as much as you'll cringe, and you'll think as much as you'll gawk.
3.5 / 5 BLOBS
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