Slither (Widescreen Edition)
by James Gunn
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Don Thompson, Elizabeth Banks, Jenna Fischer, Michael Rooker, Nathan FillionDirector: James Gunn
Brand: Universal Studios
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1; Spanish (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 95 minutes
Published: 2006-10-01
DVD Release Date: 2006-10-24
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Universal Studios
Movie Reviews of Slither (Widescreen Edition)
Movie Review: Meat is Murder
Summary: 5 Stars
The asteroid roars out of deep space, out of the inky, fathomless, crushing pressure of the infinite gulf of darkess, tears into our atmosphere, screams across the horizon and buries itself in the lower-40, or the dismal swamp, or the spooky woods.
What's left of the alien orb bubbles, and hisses, and spews, and crackles, and finally the hard crust of the meteor cracks open and something soft, pinkish, faintly luminescent, maybe pulsing with light, even, God, with hunger---something slithers out. Oh, and leaves a slime-trail behind it, as a kind of interstellar calling card and homing beacon for the Doomed & the Damned.
So this is what I want to know: when the hapless farmer, or drunken derelict, or in "Slither"'s case the town tycoon Grant Grant (the great Michael Rooker with this glorious Deep South rasp), happen across our little alien day-tripper, this little blob of Intergalactic horror that looks for all the world like a glow-in-the-dark pound of snot---why do they feel the need to explore? To find out about it? To, you know, poke it with a stick?
Whatever the cause, the effect is swift and brutal and pretty sticky: a billions-of-years-old cosmic evil with a real hankering for Ground Round (rare!) sets up camp and puts down roots---or tentacles---in the hapless Grant, and faster than you can say "Mid-Life Crisis" the town of Wheelsy is in danger of being devoured---and the New Neighbors have their multi-faceted slug-eyes greedily set on the rest of Earth.
Now: we've heard this one before---the meteor crash, slugs that wanna try on our corporeal bodies like some kind of cheap tux on prom night, the townie Chief of Police (here played by Nathan Fillion, who owns his role like a champ and spookily channels a little Brendan Fraser---or is it just me?) who carries a torch for his old flame Starla (now Grant Grant's sweet thang, played by Elizabeth Banks, who does what she has to do), the single, desperate chance to kill the Hive Mind Superbug and save the planet.
Director James Gunn takes all of these timeworn & beloved splatter tropes and forges something approaching mad horror genius out of them. I'm telling you: if you love classic, goopy horror (Night of the Creeps, The Thing, Society), then "Slither" will make you giggle. It's got loads of goop, it's got body-hopping slugs, it's got slime, it's got poor old single-mom townie Brenda, who made the mistake of acting on a girlish crush on old Grant, swollen up like Godzilla's medicine ball whining "something's wrong with me". Indeed: let's talk about a bun in the oven.
It's sick, it's demented, it's actually astoundingly disgusting in spots, and it's even disturbing. For all its twisted humor---& in "Slither", much like "Shaun of the Dead", the jokes work more out of circumstance than hilarity---"Slither" is a freakishly disturbing piece of grue, its nastiness underscored---maybe even alleviated---by the nervous laughs.
Take the sequence at the roadhouse, the countdown to the Deer Cheer, with Wheelsy's filth-spewing Mayor MacReady (Gregg Henry) lauding man's Dominion even as our interstellar New Kid on the Block (working out of his new digs in Grant's gut) pops the cork on a little major remodelling project of his own---it's a sequence that ratchets up the nerves, brings the blood to the face, and makes all but the most cold-blooded squirm.
It really does take a Village, after all.
JSG
Summary of Slither (Widescreen Edition)
SLITHER - DVD MovieWith laughs and gross-outs aplenty, Slither is the best horror comedy since Shaun of the Dead. Having written for the jubilant trash-mongers at Troma Films before scripting 2004's well-received remake of Dawn of the Dead, writer-director James Gunn crafted this hilarious splatter-fest as an homage to the comically violent horror films of the 1970s and '80s, and he gets it just right with a low-budget look, perfect casting, grisly make-up effects and judicious use of CGI gore. The story's a deliberate monster-mash, borrowing from a dozen other movies with its plot about an invasion of slithery slug-like parasites from outer space, arriving (via meteorite) in the redneck town of Wheelsy, South Carolina, where they turn most of the local yokels into flesh-eating zombies. The first victim (played by Michael Rooker) turns into a squid-like, multi-tentacled host monster (kill him and you kill 'em all), and his terrified wife (Elizabeth Banks) teams up with Wheelsy's sheriff (Nathan Fillion, from Firefly and Serenity) and mayor (comedic scene-stealer Gregg Henry) to eradicate the alien threat before Wheelsy turns into Slugville. Gunn handles comedy and horror with exuberant flair, and Slither's greatest strength is that it never aspires to be anything more than it is: 96 minutes of good laughs and gruesomeness, served up with the kind of gleeful abandon that only true horror buffs can fully appreciate.--Jeff Shannon
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