Slither (2006)

Directed by: James Gunn | 96 minutes | horror, comedy, science fiction | Actors: Nathan Fillion, Gregg Henry, Michael Rooker, Elizabeth Banks, Tania Saulnier, Brenda James, Don Thompson, Jennifer Copping, Jenna Fischer, Haig Sutherland, Bart Anderson, Amber Lee Bartlett, Adam Behr, Mary Black, Beverley Breuer, Ben Cotton Michael Cromien, Matreya Fedor, Lorena Gale, Tom Heaton, Dee Jay Jackson, Lloyd Kaufman, William MacDonald, Matt McInnis, Dustin Milligan, Robert Musnicki, Iris Quinn, Darren Shahlavi, Rob Zombie

“Slither”. You don’t even need to hear the literal meaning of the word. It is enough to see and pronounce the word to get an idea of ​​the content of the film. It’s probably about something distasteful. About crawling beasts: snakes, snails, worms… that idea. This instinctive reaction is correct: the film contains all kinds of filthy, grotesque monsters and slimy, crawling critters that make the lives of the main characters miserable. Director James Gunn is clearly not denying his “roots”. He was part of the “Troma” school founded in 1974 by Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz, which was responsible for the production of many “shock exploitation” films, i.e. films with a lot of gore, naked, explicit violence; all this topped with a humorous sauce. Examples of “classic” Troma films are: ‘Blood Sucking Freaks’ (’76), ‘The Toxic Avenger’ (’84), and ‘Tromeo and Juliet’ (’96). ‘Slither’ can be seen as a tribute to this kind of b-movie, and also as a damn entertaining film in its own right.

The first few minutes make the character of the film quite clear. From space we follow what looks like a meteorite, which is on its way to Earth. Shots of this rock are interspersed with images of two officers slumped in their car performing a speed check. That is to say, one cop is half-crazed, while the other is dryly measuring the speed of birds. He is upset because he was a few miles per hour wrong with his prediction. And, although there is nothing else to see, the two still manage to miss the object crashing into the forest. However, the viewer sees it: it is put in the perspective of some force in the forest, which leads us with great speed, à la ‘Evil Dead’, towards the object: a pulsating, and cheap-looking, cocoon. So it’s that kind of movie.

However, the pay-off of this teaser is yet to come. First, the main characters are designed. For starters, we see Mayor Jack McReady (Gregg Henry) calling someone a “cocksucker” in traffic. That’s his main character trait: McReady can swear like the best, and his reactions to the horrific, unbelievable things to come are at least a hilarious constant in the midst of all the absurdist chaos. At the heart of the film is the relationship between teacher Starla Grant (Elizabeth Banks) and her husband Grant Grant (Michael Rooker), and between Starla and Sheriff Bill Pardy (Nathan Fillion), who has always had a crush on Starla. , and now has to act as a knight in shining armor when suddenly strange things start happening within Starla and Grant’s marriage. It’s nice that James Gunn takes the time here to make the situation clear, and to make the drama really palpable. For example, Grant has marital “needs” that Starla doesn’t share one night, leaving Grant frustrated and leaving the house. Through Bank’s acting, we see that Starla clearly feels sorry for him, so she tries to make it up to her the next morning. What she doesn’t know is that Grant has been in contact with the cocoon in the woods, and is no longer the man she married.

Grant, it turns out, is changed for good, eager to infect others with his new condition. He conjures up a pair of tentacles from his abdominal cavity, which he inserts into the abdominal cavity of his victims and then rapes them, as it were. This method evokes associations with certain Manga films, and not least with the work of David Cronenberg, such as ‘Existenz’, for example, in which organic snakes were planted in the abdominal cavity like an umbilical cord. It also doesn’t seem to be a coincidence that the film’s title is very similar to that of an early Cronenberg film called “Shivers.” In that film, the characters were attacked by worm-like parasites, which entered the body through the mouth. ‘Slither’ features similar beasts in the second half of the film. It doesn’t stop with Grant’s “simple” transformation – he comes to look like a squid, which makes for a nice “running gag” – no, really all the stops go loose, and apart from slug-like crawlers we come zombies, mutated dogs, and a female victim turned into a flesh wall. And of course, one of the attacks takes place on a teenager who is just enjoying a relaxing bath, filmed in close-ups and overhead shots.

And this potpourri of monsters and humorous, and gruesome chaos that ensues is exactly what this movie needs to turn into a rather entertaining movie, a hyperactive, must-see splatter extravaganza. In the beginning, the film seems to have a predictable structure, in which the bad guy, who is originally good, simply has to be tracked down and killed with the help of his lover. And that would be that. But luckily Gunn goes completely wild, and the true b-horror film fan can get his luck with this splatter party. And towards the end, when Starla tries to subdue the grossly mutated Grant, Elizabeth Banks even manages to arouse some sympathy for this hideous-looking monster (in a scene reminiscent of Cronenberg’s ‘The Fly’) through her felt acting. Quite an achievement.

The acting in its entirety is successful with, in addition to the excellent Banks as Starla and Henry as Mayor McReady, a nice performance by Michael Rooker in a role in which he can indulge himself, and a fine performance by Nathan Fillion who is well cast as “ normal” man who can also be rough and charming. In addition, he is not shy to occasionally produce some dry one-liners, just like in ‘Serenity’. Tania Saulnier is a nice addition to the cast in the second half of the film, as the girl in the bathtub who turns out to obtain vital information about the nature and purpose of the parasites.

‘Slither’ is simply a fine production in its (sub)genre: at the same time a tribute to the “body snatchers”, the living dead, and all the leeches, gore diseases and mutations that preceded this film, and also a wonderfully gore, creepy , and funny b-movie in its own right. Logic, realism, and even originality suddenly become less important when you can have so much fun watching a movie. Basically, buy a tub of popcorn, a large Coke, and go enjoy slime and carnage in ‘Slither’.