Slither (2006)

A meteor has crash landed in a rural town. Unfortunately for farmer Grant Grant (Michael Rooker), the alien bug inhabitant of that meteor isn’t here on a diplomatic mission. Taking over Mr.Grant was the easy part, but convincing the body to infest his wife Starla (Elizabeth Banks) with it’s alien babies wasn’t as easy. Giving up, the alien occupied man with two first names chooses a townie instead to fill with his alien babies who are just dying to be born and wreak slimy havoc on the world.

Following up the Dawn of the Dead remake is not an easy task. So when writer/director James Gunn moved on to his sophomore follow-up, Slither, horror fans knew that they would at least have a few stomach churning events to witness. Unlike Dawn of the Dead, which he both wrote and directed as well, Slither is more of a horror-comedy than it is a horror-action movie. The originality of this movie bring it a far distance on it’s own, but the ending slows everything down to a crawl. Slither’s unique style of bizarre and grotesque imaging make it difficult to classify it with other cookie-cutter-squirm-in-your-seat style films. So coupled with the disgustingly absurd yet funny comedic styling, you’ll be sure to say “What the hell was that?” more times than they do in the movie itself.

The style of this movie comes of as something a little less sophisticated when compared to the writing done in Dawn of the Dead. The movie does start off much slower than one would expect, but the goo filled fun surely make up for it. The budget of this movie was reportedly much less than Gunn had originally expected, thus a possible explanation for why it feels at times as if something was missing. Right when the more action intensive moments of the movie take place, the credits roll, leaving you feeling a little unfulfilled but definitely creeped out.

If horror-comedy is your genre of choice, you won’t want to miss this. Especially fans of Nathan Fillion (Mal from Joss Whedon’s Serenity) who plays Bill Pardy, the wanna-be Ash-style hero. The promise he brings to this movie and his tongue in cheek styling almost make it too easy for him to steal the show.