Format: Streaming video from HBO Go on rockin’ flatscreen.
Mashing up a couple of genres is at best a risky proposition. Most of the time, it’s simply not done well and the film, rather than being a blend of two good genres, turns out to be not enough of either of them. Slither is how it’s done. This isn’t a film that really goes for scary as much as it goes for straight-up gross out. It’s not scary, matter of fact and it is really gross. It’s also really funny. It’s not merely funny in a few scenes; there are jokes here that play with the expectations of the audience and that throw back to classic horror movies of the past several decades.
Slither is sort of a blood-soaked version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers with a little bit of the John Carpenter version of The Thing. A more honest comparison is probably with Night of the Creeps, although writer/director James Gunn’s horror roots go quite a bit deeper than this. A meteor impacts the planet near a small town somewhere (Arkansas?) in the rural American South. Attached to the meteor is a life form that infects local rich guy Grant Grant (Michael Rooker) and turns him into a creature that a) wants to eat a vast amount of meat, b) can turn other creatures into meat-craving breeders that eventually explode into a giant swarm of slugs, and c) can use those slugs to turn people into acid-vomiting zombies that mainly are used to bring meat to the breeders.
