Slither

September 9, 2007

Not what I expected from the writer of Tromeo and Juliet.

It wasn’t that the film wasn’t gross enough – it was plenty gross. No small amount of money was spent on gross-out alien special effects – there was enough festering, oozing slime for 3 movies. I guess I was expecting something more “TROMA-y” and Slither was more like a classic B-movie than a TROMA flick. Maybe that’s why James Gunn ditched TROMA in the first place – he had a vision beyond crushed melon heads and using the same car crash footage over and over. Gunn also wrote the remake of Dawn of the Dead – but that seemed more like turning a classic B-movie into a serious film…so I don’t know what to think about his writing style.

Slither follows the same basic formula as most alien invasion movies. A mysterious something crashes to Earth and the alien inhabits the first poor bastard to cross its path. At first, no one notices anything wrong, but soon people begin to notice the bastard’s strange behavior. Of course, by then it’s too late and a full scale invasion is already imminent. This formula is well over 50 years old and has been done again and again (most recently in Nicole Kidman’s bomb, Invasion), but James Gunn manages to make it feel a little bit fresher than recent attempts. Maybe it was the addition of the Borg-like hive mind sub-plot – or maybe it was the sheer amounts of gooey prosthetics used.

The best part of the movie was the crazy mayor – he was a real scene stealer. Speaking of scene stealers, where did they find the extras for this film? It’s like they scraped the bottom of a Wal-Mart at 2:00 AM to find the townsfolk of Wheelsy. They had to be real white trash – they looked so authentic!

I was excited to see Jenna Fischer in a cameo – it was oh-so-stereotypical to see her as the receptionist, but she certainly didn’t play it as a “Pam” rehash. I was kind of sad to read the other day that she and James Gunn were divorcing – they didn’t seem like the usual showbiz couple.

Everytime we watch a movie at home, there’s a struggle over getting to watch the credits. My argument is that so many movies have tidbits after the credits, that you’ve got to watch the credits EVERY TIME. My husband tries to fast forward through the credits to get to the end…I HATE that. I’m glad I didn’t let him win this time, because I got a brand new (well, new to me) Old 97’s song during the credits AND an additional scene. So THERE. (Funny, I checked the tracklisting for the Old 97’s song and it isn’t on there – what the fuck is up with that? Guess I won’t be buying it anytime soon.)

According to my husband, Slither is a cross between Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Night of the Creeps. A comparison to either one of those films alone isn’t a big selling point, but maybe the two of them put together is a little more alluring.