Review #139: Slither (2006)

Cast/Notable Credits:
James Gunn (Director)

Nathan Fillion (Bill Pardy): Saving Private Ryan (1998), Dracula 2000 (2000), Serenity (2005), White Noise 2 (2007); Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place, Buffy, Firefly, Lost, Desperate Housewives, & Castle T.V. series

Elizabeth Banks (Starla Grant): Spiderman (2002), 2 (2004) & 3 (2007), Catch Me If You Can (2002), Seabiscuit (2003), The 40 Yr Old Virgin (2005), Invincible (2006), Meet Dave (2008), Zack & Miri Make a Porno (2008), W (2008), Role Models (2008), The Uninvited, Scrubs T.V. series

Michael Rooker (Grant): Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986), Eight Men Out (1988), Mississippi Burning (1988), Days of Thunder (1990), JFK (1991), Cliffhanger (1993), The Replacement Killers (1998), The Bone Collector (1999), The 6th Day (2000), Jumper (2008)

Gregg Henry (Jack): Star Trek 9 (1998), Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever (2002), United 93 (2006), The Black Dahlia (2006), Gilmore Girles & The Riches T.V. series

Tania Saulnier (Kylie): The Wicker Man (2006) (Pictured Right)

Jenna Fischer (Shelby): Blades of Glory (2007), Walk Hard (2008), The Office T.V. series

Don Thompson (Wally): Watchmen (2009), Battlestar Galactica T.V. series

Xantha Radley (Uptight mom): The Fog (2005), The Wicker Man (2006), MOH: Right to Die (2007), The X-files 2 (2008)

Dustin Milligan (Drawing Boy): Final Destination 3 (2006), The Butterfly Effect 2 (2006), The Messengers (2007), 90210 T.V. series

Lorena Gale (Janene): The Fly 2 (1989), Ernest Goes to School (1994), Halloween Part 8, The Butterfly Effect (2005), The Perfect Score (2004), The Chronicles of Riddick (2004), Fantastic Four (2005), The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005),The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008), Battlestar Galactica T.V. series

Trailer:

Plot:

An asteroid carrying an alien species (oversized worms…or slugs) falls to Earth and crashes in the woods to the nearby town of Wheelsy, South Carolina. One of the town’s locals, Grant Grant, (yes…he has the same first as last name...freakin' rednecks) comes into contact with the asteroid and the alien species takes over Grant’s body.

Over the next few days, Grant has an extraordinary appetite for meat while he evolves into a mutant alien. Grant impregnates another local woman (Brenda) with the alien species during sex. Grant keeps Brenda hostage in a local barn as she grows and mutates into an alien also.

Later on she eventually gives birth to thousands of alien slugs who then turn on the residents of Wheelsy. The slug enters through a person’s mouth and then eventually takes over the body. It’s up to the town’s chief of police, and his gang of remaining survivors to kill of the alien infestation.

Villain:

The bad guy monsters of the film are alien slugs and their evil leader, a mutated snail-squid looking thing. The snail-squid looking thing has different looks throughout the movie as it progresses with the mutation with its host, Grant. Grant is played by Michael Rooker (Pictured right) who does a fabulous job in the film.

The stages of the mutant Grant starts off with a pair of alien tentacles that pops out of his belly button. Next, hideous boils appear around the body, mostly the side of the neck and face. Before long, Grant’s arms are transformed into tentacles.

Grant disappears for a few days in the movie and then returns as a cow sized slug with all of the previously mentioned characteristics. The final look of the creature at the end of the film resembles a massive blob. It kind of reminds me of Jabba the Hutt that occupies an entire living room…with all the tentacles and stuff. The final image is pretty grotesque and hideous.

The alien slugs look like a giant red worm and are about the size of a beanie baby…remember those things? The red slugs move pretty fast and have the ability to “slither” up walls. As I mentioned before, they enter through the victim’s mouth and proceed up to the host’s brain to take over their body.

Once the human host has been taken over, they become part of the “collective”. All of the aliens are connected to the main slug villain, Grant. Whatever they see, he sees…etc., etc.

Cast:

The strength of the movie HAS to be its cast. Leading the way as the town’s chief of police, Bill Parady, is Nathan Fillion (Pictured Left). Fillion is…in my opinion…one of the most underrated actors in Hollywood. Why he isn’t in more sh*t, it’s beyond me. Fillion is a great man for playing the “hero role” or “action guy” in films. In Slither, he delivers as a stone faced, dry humored, one liner character you could root for.

Elizabeth Banks (Pictured below) plays the love interest of Fillion in the film, Starla. Starla and Bill grew up in the little town as friends. Starla was the town’s beautiful little southern blonde who wanted to be a star. At sometime Starla traded in her dreams and married the town’s rich man, Grant Grant. This left Bill all starry eyed and heartbroken for her as he secretly gazes upon her. As you can see, this leaves an interesting little love triangle between the three.

Slither’s most fun character has to be Jack, the town’s mayor. Gregg Henry stars as Jack in the film and does an excellent job. Jack is the poster child for being a huge fowl mouthed prick who everyone loves to hate. In this case, his character is the funniest in the film. Henry does a great job acting as the wuss in the film, but spouting off some great one-liners while acting scared.

SFX/Gore:

Slither delivered with state of the art special effects as well as any other film made within the last ten years. The only problem I had with the film was its use of outlandish, over the top nasty, disgusting alien effects. I thought that poor use of over the top, disgusting to be disgusting effects brought the film’s street cred down a little bit. Unless you like seeing that type of direction, you’ll probably agree with me. It was like seeing a polished version of a Troma film.

One special effect sequence I had problems with was the deer attack at the police station. I guess one of the slugs attacked and took over a deer or dog…it was hard to tell. Chief Parady was at the station when it attacked him in the dark. Parady fenced off the attack, but it looked like he was fighting a stuffed deer or piñata. That scene looked pretty fake.

TNA:

The film pretty much is a cock tease. The gorgeous Elizabeth Banks is the center piece of the film and teases the audience through out. In the film, she wears skimpy lingerie and even has a shower scene, but does not show the goods. Bummer. She is definitely great eye candy though.

Filling up the screen with additional eye candy are two other stars, Jenna Fischer and Tania Sauliner. Fischer (Pictured left) is one of my favorite actresses from the T.V. show, The Office. Fischer plays a bit part as the police dispatcher. It’s a small part, but it’s great to see her on the screen…despite her weird hairdo in the film. Sauliner (Kylie) gives us a quick nipple shot during the film’s bath tub scene. Quick…but nice.

T.Gun’s Take:

The film was dubbed a new version of the 80’s cult hit, Night of the Creeps. Remember that piece of art? Despite all the crying film’s producers claimed that Slither is not Night of the Creeps, it really is. If it looks like a rat, and smells like a rat…then it probably is a rat. It’s the same logic in this case.

Night of the Creeps has little slug aliens that crashed landed on Earth via asteroid. They enter through the mouth and take over the human host. Kill the master to kill them all. Slither…well…sounds the same doesn’t it? Not that I’m complaining that it is a remake of Night of the Creeps, but I’m just saying, give props to the original idea.

Despite my love for the cast, Slither didn’t deliver for me. Before the film came out, I was one of its biggest fans and supporters. Then I went and saw it at the theater. To say the least, it disappointed me. There were plenty of parts and ingredients in the film that I liked, but as a whole, the film was a dud.

Slither is an attempt at a dark comedy, but its one-liners are far too few in between one another. I waited in anticipation, but I lost interest in the film…or fell asleep… during the times in between. I’ve watched Slither many times since, hoping that something could spark a fire down inside me, but it still comes up short. I want to like the film, and I have given it many opportunities, but I still have trouble accepting it as a whole.

Slither incorporated a bad soundtrack to the movie in a good way. Throughout the movie, we are the beneficiaries to the sounds of a compilation of the best love songs of the 70’s and 80’s. As bad as it was to hear on the screen, it added a nice touch to its dark comedy side.

One of the biggest gripes I had with the film was the idea of explaining the whole alien slug history/saga in the single attempt to get into Kylie’s mouth. While struggling with a slug in the bath tub scene, Kylie finds one of them halfway down her throat.

I wasn’t a 100% sure what she did, it was either take a bite into it in an attempt to kill it, or it actually got far enough into her, that all of the alien species memories downloaded into her brain. Instantly Kylie became the alien slug expert with history and knowledge. She knew where they came from, and how to kill them. WTF?

It was like a badly done, cheesy scene like the one in the movie, Independence Day when the president saw into the alien’s brain and learned all the history. For me, it was a cop-out on how to explain sh*t. I think that it would have been better to not even go down that road rather than give the audience a B.S. explanation like that.

I continue to give Slither a chance to find that warm little spot in my heart, but it still hasn’t gotten there yet. I don’t know if it ever will now. I can’t stress how much I wanted for this movie to have been a success. Apparently, its Box Office numbers swing in the same direction as I do when it comes to its success. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, then check it out for yourself and see if you come to the same conclusion I did.

Misc. Movie Trivia:
-Film opened on March 31, 2006 and made $7.8 million at the Box Office ($3.8 million opening weekend)
-Director James Gunn was married to Jenna Fischer at the time
-Rob Zombie plays the voice of the doctor over the phone