Willa's Flic Pic: Slither * * * ½

Slither
- James Gunn
- Comedy/Horror, 2006
- R rated
* * * ½



Starla Grant: Baby, what happened to your face?
Grant Grant: It's just a bee sting.

You know I'm a super light-weight when it comes to horror films. My T5 for this time if year is best called Halloween picks, not Horror. I'm not an aficionado. But I'm really excited to add Slither to that list.

Sometimes I think you can tell a good movie when you can go back into IMDB and read the movie quotes and they make you laugh all over again. That's definitely true here. James Gunn, writer, director, and actor, accomplishes that successfully in three areas: cast, script, and special effects.

Gunn wrangled for himself some really funny people. Of course, I'm a huge fan of Nathan Fillion (Captain Tight Pants, Firefly). Gregg Henry's performance is over-the-top hysterical as the town's Mayor. Michael Rooker plays a great sympathetic victim/alien as is Elizabeth Banks as his sweet, tender-hearted southern wife. The entire supporting cast is spot on. The flip side of this coin is the great characterization written by Gunn. Characters who are on screen for only a brief moment are distinguishable (Jenna Fisher, from The Office, as, who else but the receptionist). Fun-ny!

The only experience I had with Gunn's work prior to this was Scooby-Do. Luckily for him, this is a much better showing of his talents as director and writer. We all know you can have a great cast but have an utterly dreadful film because of poor directing or script. Here the talent had great material. With comedy and horror, timing and pace are essential for effect and Gunn accomplishes both for the laughs and the screams he wants. But I think the great work in this script is in its simplicity. There aren't too many subplots or overly complicated details. Simple town, simple people, with a simple alien problem. Kudos to Gunn for not getting bogged down and just making a funny horror movie.

Grant Grant (Rooker) is infected by an alien worm inside a meteorite that crashes in the small town of Weesley. The worm gradually overtakes Grant's body in an effort to produce millions of leech like worms that can infest all the humans on earth. Starla (Banks) is Grant's young, ever faithful wife who eventually has to set out to destroy her husband along with the town sherriff, Bill Hardy (Fillion). Not only do they have to destroy Grant, who is becoming stronger and stronger, but also all the towns people that have been turned into zombies by the worm seeds.

I don't think bad special effects would have ruined this film. It might have turned into a cult classic but, as it is, the effects were noticeably impressive. MyGeek pointed out that they used such massive amounts of the material to create the Grant monster that the national supply was depleted. They had to shut the shoot down for a month so the manufacturer could produce more.