Slither (2006)

When I first saw the previews for Slither, I couldn’t figure out if it was a spoof or if it was actually supposed to be scary. With the amounts of gore in the preview, it sure seemed like a horror movie, but some of the over-the-top effects (including a way too inflated woman) made it look more of a spoof. Unsure as to it’s intent, I decided to wait for this flick to arrive on DVD. So, would Slither be this year’s Shaun Of The Dead - or just a horror movie gone bad?

Nathan Fillion, who was fun in Serenity, does a good job in Slither. He seems to be well-suited to playing heroes with a sense of humor. He knows the movie is a bit silly, and is able to play into that without turning his character into a complete joke. It’s a thin tightrope to walk, but he does a good job handling it.

Michael Rooker, seems a bit miscast at first with his new bald pate in Slither. As he is infected with the alien species, however, he seems to fit more into the role, and undergoes the second-oddest transformation of the film (The oddest transformation is left to Brenda James, who balloons into the world’s largest woman).

The plot is typical for a B horror movie - an alien plague invades earth and attacks a small country town. Throughout the film, however, the director can’t seem to decide between playing it straight and spoofing the old classics. It seems at times that Slither is more of a homage to the cheesy horror flicks of the past - at other times it tries to play as an update to those old horror flicks.

This strange back-and-forth makes for an odd movie-watching experience - and the effects help increase that dichotomy. The slugs that attack later on are rather creepy and nasty-looking, but the balloon woman and the main bad guy are both incredibly cheesy looking. Like the film itself, the viewer is unsure whether the cheesiness - or the creepiness - is intentional, and doesn’t quite know how to take it half the time.

Good horror spoofs are few and far-between. Viewers got lucky with the incredibly funny Shaun Of The Dead a couple of years ago, but don’t expect for the same fun romp with Slither.

At times disgusting, and at times incredibly cheesy, even Nathan Fillion’s tongue-in-cheek performance is unable to bring Slither up out of the muck it’s drowning in. Slither is like the bad karaoke rendition of “The Crying Game” it showcases near the beginning - at times annoying and somewhat disgusting, it’s funny almost in spite of itself…but in a sick and twisted way that may have viewers cringing at their own reactions.