Slither Review

[Mr.HoRrOr]

Plot:A small town is taken over by an alien plague, turning residents into zombies and all forms of mutant monsters.





Cast:
Nathan Fillion
Elizabeth Banks
Michael Rooker
Gregg Henry
Tania Saulnier
Brenda James
Don Thompson
Jennifer Copping
Jenna Fischer
Haig Sutherland








My Thoughts:Not as good as advertised









Review:"Slither" is the kind of film that you would think would offer up some good entertainment for an hour and 30 minutes or so. However, that simply isn't the case with this movie. After some character introductions through dialogue, the film begins it's slugs from outerspace story with Michael Rooker's character of Grant Grant becoming the first of many to become infected with the deadly intergalactic parasites. The cool thing about "Slither" is that it doesn't waste any time with the whole metamorphosis of Grant Grant. His actions quickly become more and more weird and his appearance changes drastically day by day, much to the dismay and fright of his wife Starla Grant played by Elizabeth Banks. The FX work in this film is really great, as shown when Grant is changing due to the alien that has taken him over. As the dude changes he gets more and more gross looking, and to gross out someone like myself, that's some pretty damn good work. The problem with "Slither" is that it sets up an interesting storyline and follows it through all the way up until the town of Wheelsy comes under attack by a brigade of these alien slugs, which comes as a result of Grant impregnating a local girl. "Slither" is very reminiscent of "Eight Legged Freaks", as it's a story of a sleepy little town coming under attack from a unnatural enemy. But both films really differ from each other once the stories are laid out for us. "Slither" serves up laughs and a strong build up to utter chaos in the first 20 or so minutes, just as "Eight Legged Freaks" did. But unlike "Eight Legged Freaks", which followed up it's build up with some great thrills and action all the way to the end...the problem in "Slither" comes when it's time for all hell to break loose and the human characters are forced to take on the creatures. The movie spends too much time with jokes and cheesy dialogue and misses alot of opportunities to create some great action scenes and is very lacking in the gun play department. You would think in a movie where the entire sheriff's department, and a few civilians are trying to take down zombies who've been "taken over" and spit out acid goo at people...there'd be alot of gun play, exploding heads, etc. But "Slither" really skimps on any real big gun play scenes which hurt the movie when you consider how dangerous of an enemy they're dealing with. One of "Slither"'s only standout scenes comes durng a sequence where the character of Shelby manages to kill one of the slugs in her bathroom, and has to make a daring ecape from the roof of her house which had become overrun by them. Another problem with "Slither" is that the villains of the film are underused. The slugs themselves are a pretty interesting and intriguing evil. They come from outerspace, and have apparently devoured the life on all other planets which is why they made their way to earth. It's also suggested via a flashback scene that they came here before decades ago, but again their origins and motives aren't really explored enough to make the viewer care about their ultimate goal in the big scheme of things. Alot of the characters escape scenes are also poorly done and come off as more so unbelievable rather than impressive. "Slither" is a horror movie that had alot of promise and a really cool villain, but the bad dialogue, and underusing of the villains hurt the movie to the point where it becomes a break even horror film. Had it not been for the performances of Nathan Fillion and Elizabeth Banks, this movie would've been much much worse.







Pros:Very high gross out factor, the slugs albeit cgi, still looked good enough mainly because most of the slug scenes take place at night. Pretty good performances by Elizabeth Banks and Nathan Fillion. Nice creature fx as well.





Cons:Lack of action in that big stretch of the movie that sit's between the first 20 or so minutes and the last 25 minutes. Most of the characters were uninteresting throwaways, while others were just plain annoying.
The villains of the movie were really underused and could've used more expansion of their backstory.







Overall:Worth a watch, but don't venture in expect grade A horror material.