It’s that Meteor Shit
Slither Thanklessly Re-Splats ‘80s Critters at the Movies

Slither is for the suckers who like to get their friends on the couch for a horror movie marathon come every October, even if the inner geek styles would love it to be more frequent. Always avoid zombie movies since they are far too monotonous in number, as is their common fright source of the living dead: go outside, cake macabre makeup on the passerby, viola.

The zombie formula needs pepper and salt in its plotline, which is why the sadistic, smartly ironic spins on undead capitalism that are John Carpenter’s 1988 They Live and George Romero’s 1978 Dawn of the Dead continue to walk; still, it’s not kosher to screen either during a beer-and-jibbers scary flick throw-down, the zombie-rule encroaching on the latter, and They Live’s lousy pacing and daytime settings jar the it-came-from-the-night theme.

“He looks like something that fell off my dick during the war.” On the other detached hand, Slither is a giant, comforting cheeseburger taking up empty theaters, oozing grease and fat to coat rotten hangovers with ‘80s dumbness and darkness like The Smiths' “How Soon Is Now?” But this is such an American horror movie, where the fear junks itself up on a non-diet of ugliness - terrorizing pets, cows, teenage girls in bathtubs, sluts in saloons, pigs with badges, Jesus herbs, and zombiefying the entire local populace - only to KAPLOW into guts with the “who you fucking with” casualty of a video game boss. Slither’s director, James Gunn, is a rookie American Patriot for horror, putting holes in Asians and their imported frequency-static-dark-eyed-kid celluloid, while gently rocking Takashi Miike’s cradle. Two hick cops are parked doing nothin’ in the conservative town of Wheelsy, Texas, when a meteor crashes and unleashes a “martian.” Hah, that’s the plot. Name the last time a Critters was in theatres.

Gunn could have copped out early and allowed his horror to gestate internally throughout a la Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday. Of course, he doesn’t, but Slither would have experienced the same lamentably small $3 million weekend opening either way.

Remember summer camp in the mountains: Kids scattered like idiots when it was raining to play tether ball as counselors warned them of the mud-bugs that squiggle into bare feet? Those squigglies might be real, and the first and main victim here, actor Michael Rooker (the anal mall dude in Mallrats), gets one to the chest.

Shortly after, there is a creeping paranoia that Slither is a jip, and it's all too probable that the film will drag up to its final 15-minutes to crack into the gore budget. Michael Rooker’s infested character, a wealthy Republican steroid named Grant Grant, remains intact long enough to give his damsel of a teacher wife an orgasm and to buy a flat-bed full of cutlets from a butcher who looks like James Murphy from the DFA in a decade. Grant Grant also makes a burrow for himself of dead leaves and uncooked meat in the basement and the set-up is so fucking whaaaaat - all Patrick Bateman sci-fi - that the approximate 27,000 “worms” can wait.

In the meantime, these alien worms – like magnified leeches from Stand by Me – are feeding inside a balding girl stored in a barn who has ballooned into a sore 10 times the weight of the glutton from Se7en. Before this sad hag dies giving birth, her carbonated head pulls a rant worthy of a blood-vessel-popping Sam Kinison, and then her belly opens up for a massive, bloody plop of worms in the thousands to fall out like limbs and fish from a gutted shark.

Wiggling up and mouthing their victims with the patience of a drunken loser tonguing at a party, the worms are one of countless, crass allusions to aggressive sex in the flick, not to be outdone by a possessed Grant Grant’s maggot-skinned tentacles which jab into living females’ torsos and pump away in long, wiry thrusts. But Slither’s execution isn’t bottom-feeder straight-to-video for cats in trailers smoking aluminum foil bowls, nor is it Men in Black CGI circle-jerking. The picture puts effort into making its scenes vile enough for a hard-R, but keeps them airy and sarcastic to score a slot in late night video-thons for years ahead. That’s a small feat, but this is a fuckin’ horror movie and the canon is so ‘80s-classic saturated that this flick should be celebrated – it’s the type of theatrical horror movie where some oddity with hamburger eyes jerking in the back makes the viewing even better (though this happens rarely).

Yeah, Gunn pulls an accessible “Tarantino,” paying homage to A Nightmare on Elm Street’s claw-in-the-bath, The Fly’s monstrosity (it’s a “squid”), and the cops and localized zombies from grindhouse druggie fave I Drink Your Blood, as well as namedropping from David Cronenberg’s Videodrome and John Carpenter’s The Thing. Geek out elsewhere, but what’s more curious about this director is his over-the-head assault on religion, from numerous characters repeatedly saying “Jesus” until one blatantly calls another out on it, to close-ups of Christmas tree ornaments being crushed underfoot. Maybe God’s paid back Gunn by making Slither a sizeable flop, or maybe that’s just what happens when a director steals everything from Night of the Creeps. Even if I wasn’t kidding, it’s okay with me.

-Hunter Stephenson

Slither is now playing at select Miami theatres.