Slither
Overall Recommendation
Recommendation?
This is a fun movie that’s smart and unpredictable. Don’t think you’re getting anything resembling a traditional zombie movie, and remember that the zombies here aren’t really into eating brains. So you are within your rights to ask “Is this really something I’m interested in seeing? A horde of zombies trying to convince a woman to get back with her Jabba-The-Hutt-Hemorrhoid-looking husband who is also a major dick to her? There’s some really great startles and jumps here, and the gore is better than most. There is not an instant of special effects that is anything other than on point and stellar, but like I said, you’re constantly aware of the sacrifice made by these not being real zombies. I will say that they made it work. It’s probably happy coincidence that it’s got a couple actors I love, as well as an equally strong supporting cast; it’s got an interesting- (in the way that taking LSD and then spending the afternoon with your cat is interesting) plot, but at the end of it… the whole, complete, all is said and done… it’s more enjoyable in the short term snack silo than it is a nurturing or long term enhancement of your understanding of the genre type of movie. Yes, it’s a hell of a lot better than some of the roots genre classics, but it’s also so far out there that it’s not really in the silo, it’s more mentioned in an asterisk that’s painted on the side of the silo. If you don’t like Mal, you’re not going to like the movie, and if you’re a super traditionalist, you’re not going to like it. If you got an open mind and you’re willing to hang on to see where it takes you, this bit of ridiculousness will take you, think of a world where ET meets Alien and Al Bundy is the Evil Villain and a buff charismatic beef-cake is… I don’t know. ET.
Plot Autopsy
Plot Autopsy
- RedEye… get lucky and unlucky
- RedEye stockpiles meat and grows a big growth
- The Larva Lady explodes
- Slugs are in your mouth
- Zombies are on your lawn
- As Hank Hill said- “Taste the meat, not the heat”
Zombie Description
Zombie Description
Ok. This is the one that I could go on for hours about, but it’s also the thing that sorta isn’t really important given the general mess of “Let’s include everything!” that they decide to wade though. And I don’t mean that critically. It’s a good movie. But let’s go through the lifecycle that we saw before zombies came about.
- Meteor crashes
- Thing crawls off to become glowingish larva dart-shooting thing
- Dart gets stuck into RedEye
- RedEye tentacle-infects… Brenda? In the least sexual way imaginable.
- Brenda eats until she’s essentially a human tick, who then ruptures
- When she ruptures, she turns into hundreds of slugs
- The slug has to crawl down your throat for…
- You become a zombie*
- (you’re not REALLY a zombie)
- You’re infected, not undead
- You’re of a hive-mind, not mindless
- You want to monopolize all of… Whathernames time. Instead of eating brains.
- You remember things
- You make threats and reason
- Most of the time you’re Grant
- Oh yeah, let’s not forget the spitting of caustic poison green goo
See? They’re not really zombies, but they’re close enough for genre inclusion. I mean, I’m just going to assume that’s the case, ‘cause Slither is in a bunch of Top Number of zombie movies. I was going to watch something else tonight- Oh! Zombi 3. Fulci got sick and someone else took over, so it’s even less understandable if what I read serves right. But instead of that, I went with these slug things. Ok.
Where the money went
Where the money went
I think the money really went to special effects, which were awesome, and hiring good acting talent. This has Mal, and RedEye (Look. The Oblivion Movies… are sort of like… a special club for… I don’t have a nice way to end this statement. What’s her name reminds me of Sophia Lauren though. She’s like watching the Venus De Milo go shopping at Hot Topic. But enough about her. Not even in this. You know what was? Mal’s butt. It’s gorgeous. There’s an episode of… Uh… Serenity (Nothing in the ‘verse can stop me!) where he ends up naked on a very sunny planet and straight man that I am, I cannot look away. Unless maybe Lash was in the other direction in similarly provocative attire. I’m not sure why I’m ranting about a couple actor’s asses. They’re probably prosthetically enhanced or otherwise steroid-coddled. But the money- The money went for awesome special effects, and great talent. Even the blonde love interest here. I don’t know if I just think I’ve seen her before, or if I have. I think there’s another nearby dimension- maybe one where I broke my nose- where *she* is the actress in X-Files?
How bad an idea is it to put getting my nose broken on my bucket list? I’ve always been so afraid of it. I wish this wasn’t the case.
Best Weapon
Best Weapon
Hmm. There really wasn’t all that much fighting back. I love me the .12 gauge, I… found humor in the propane idiocy- it should have frozen him. Ummm… Maybe a steel pole in the neck and getting kicked in the head a lot? Was there a bar fight scene in the beginning? I have no idea how this started.
Can I get a hand?
Can I get a hand?
There were some really good zombie-sit-ups, but none of them came out the dirt. Most of these zombies got created by having a large, slightly phallic slug crawl down their throats, so we really had a lot more flopping and twitching on the ground before sitting up and doing zombie things. This is so far on the boundaries of the genre cannon that there was very little nod given to tradition. I did note the zombie preacher, and it was good. I feel like there were a couple other inclusions that I’m missing here.
That was new!
That was new!
The honest to god unexpected hella-gross shocker here is when the Mayor loses his shit and starts chewing away on a corpse, simply because everyone else is. Either that, or I missed something. That’s distinctly possible, because my wife baked churro cupcakes during this review and I ate a couple of them and may have been doing so during an important plot revelation or such. But yeah… watching someone just go cannibal at a moment’s whim… that was new.
Review Notes
Review Notes
I’m showing my grupty old man hand here, but I don’t think “smoking” should be one of the content warnings of movies. It’s life. It exists, it happens.
Comet coming in, a couple of cops measuring birds. African swallow.
Hey! That’s Mal! From…
Shit. Something behind their car.
First person monster vision
A foreign egg cracking. Looks like… From… The dentist… plant…
The mayor throwing a fit.
A school teacher.
Cock-a-roaches
Oh, shit… who’s he? The teacher lady boyfriend a jerk?
This guy is a creep. I can tell these things. He’s creepy. And she’s…
“That’s disrespectful.”
Oh, that’s right! He’s the guy from Walking Dead. I think. Man, I know him from somewhere.
The crying game. Oh shit. I love her expression.
I think this is the type of redhead that supposed to be trouble. Brenda.
Oh… Stumbling through the woods for the hook-up? No… to see a tree.
Jesus, he’s inarticulate.
I guess the rule about being a jerk to girls and they’ll come onto you is true!
But he’s a good guy at heart? I didn’t see that coming.
And they found… gremlin poops.
A trail of gremlin poop.
Oh! He’s… JESUS. HE’S REDEYE! FROM OBVLIVION!!
Do NOT poke glowing larva things the size of watermelons!
Don’t stand there!
Don’t… well, it’s a little late now.
This animation… Ugh.
I think he’s a zombie?
Redeye. Holy… I love RiffTrax.
“MEAT”
This is the… whitest… love song. Where’s the Barry White? Where’s the Marvin Gaye?
This isn’t good, he’s got a parasitic thorn creature running him! That’s who you seduced! We saw his brain stop working correctly!
“Oooh, you slut!”
Grant, that’s not the right reaction to watching your wife’s butt.
Not the dog. Fuck. Really? Jesus, universe, does EVERYTHING have to go full fucking circle? I rant about how I hate movies where the dog dies, and then less than 20 minutes into Slither, RedEye kills the fucking dog. Really?? I was ranting at my wife about this circular cat glitching DeJa’Vu shit. This is my theory. The universe, or at least, the mental computing horsepower reasoning thinking controller portion of the formula of the universe and dimension we inhabit- shit’s getting overwhelmed. Like trying to run PS5 games on a PS4. So it’s losing a LOT of fidelity and randomness. What I mean is that like, in The Terminator, when Arnahld the Terminator runs down the list of responses to the Super in the hallway, he has about a dozen, and he settles on the classic “Fuck you, asshole.” But in this world now that I’m living in and writing this review and you’re reading it in- it’s getting overwhelmed by too many concurrent variables, so it’s running out of RAM, and as such, it’s recycling the same things way too frequently- in this case, about once a review cycle. Lately, every review has something that I wrote about in the intro showing up unexpectedly in the review. Or life itself which occurs while I write the review, such as receiving news or a text in real time.
At least it looks like the dog got some good bites in.
She’s in the shower. So artfully fogged.
He’s creeping down the hallway.
Oh… we have yuck tentacles growing out of his chest.
He’s able to… well, not kill her. So that’s good.
“I’m surprised you’re able to lift a mug at all, you’ve been carrying that torch for so long.”
Oh! Shit! That’s… Uh… FUCK. I’m stoned. That’s… Troma. Janitor. What the hell…
Grant. You’re a horrible sleazeball.
Mal… You have an immensely muscular butt. I guess that’s why you can’t get a buzz.
The 2005 Deer Cheer. I come from a place where they used to do shit like that.
Oh. The guy in the picture on Amazon is the Mayor. And he’s a dick.
Quite the Deer Hunting celebration.
We’re having quite the unsexy shirt-off!
“Let the hunt begin?” What the fuck is this? Burt Reynolds Country?
He’s… tentacle drinking her.
Mal is making good time.
Is he killing or impregnating her?
Never good when the lights aren’t working.
Oh shit. That’s a startle!
“It’s just a bee sting.”
Damn. I know him from something else though…
That’s quite the meat-horde.
Has his eyesight gotten better?
WHAT THE FUCK?? He was impregnating her?
He’s bringing all this raw meat to her to eat? While she’s chained up in a barn in the middle of the woods? That’s not going to smell bad in a hurry.
I like her style, but a baseball bat isn’t really the right tool for that…
Oh, yuck. Such yuck.
Oh, FUCK! STARTLED!
Quite the gross-ass house, well… basement of horror.
He’s… Window!!
Half an hour in, no real zombies…
Oh. His arm is not. Human. This is what they mean by monsters, I guess?
His arm went to Mr. Elastic man.
3 days later…
The mayor… has a roman cannon up his ass.
Now the Mayor is talking about Lyme Disease. Which featured heavily in the last write up? The one before that? Dude named T____ losing a dozen IQ points due to a crayon and candy egg? Circles.
“It’s 100 acres. It’s be like finding a needle in a fuckstack.”
Cleft Palat? Pallet? Jokes. Kinda funny. I like Mal’s comeback.
The squid. I can’t not mention the squid.
“Your mom weren’t too proud when you came out either, Wally.”
“We got this grenade we confiscated from them jokers that wanted to use it to fish for trout?”
Audi. I like the Audi.
Things never go right for Mal.
Good old… foreign vs. domestic… again…
They all going on the stake out to catch the lizard-octopus man when it eats the cowie-cow. I think.
That Mayor deserves to get his nuts stomped. Is he the guy from Best In Show?
Good old reminiscing stories. They… are unrequited.
Oh. Now. Yes. He is a monster.
Squid would have been preferable to what he his now.
“He looks like something that fell off my dick during the war.”
He looks like a land version of a mermaid Hellboy.
I’ve never seen… a tentacle whip… like that…
Special effects are pretty damn amazing.
What’s her name looks like a less interesting version of Jamie Presley
Once again, rock/paper/scissors is used…
Human huge larva thing.
“You mind handing me a piece of that opossum over there? Just a little bit?”
We’re half way through and no zombies.
Oh! Yuck! Fat larva lady popped into a bunch of slug things! Like, thousands!
And they’re trying to get into everyone’s mouth!
And… the people who got one… I think… they’re turning into the zombies?
Slug things all over the place…
A very nice bathroom. A very nice bath.
Slugs everywhere…
Her mom is not the most literary. See? She’s even trying to get the kids to read less!
So many slugs…
This is gross.
Now it’s obscene…
I want to throw the fuck up. This is gross.
She saw all sorts of Paul type shit about the slugs evolutionary history, but ultimately got the thing out and thrown across the room. That was fucking disgusting
Never seen a hair-straightener thing used as a weapon.
Mom’s there to vomit blood on you!
Breaking through the door… too late! I like the hopelessness of that. Feels yummy.
Out of the porch roof! Off the porch roof!
Out to the Ranger!
The windshield shadow view is pretty new. Gross. Scary. New.
“Praise Jesus? That’s fucking pushing it! This shit’s about as far from God as shit can get!”
Nice Animal Planet plug. I like it.
Oh. Poor Bambi.
“If this shit’s contagious… If I turn into a fucking mollusk… I’m gonna sue their asses. I’ll tell you that.”
Shouldn’t have laughed at the 2nd joke there, but I did.
Oh! Startled! We… We have our first zombie!!
They talk. They… hive mind? The cop is talking for Grant.
This is… fucked up. This is pretty fucked.
Zombies everywhere now! I love it!
Zombie family… begging to get in… this is so good! So good!
“This is family fun day, isn’t it?”
All the zombies are Grant!
Oh! Shit!! They spit green shit that burns and kills! They’re like those Jurassic Park lizard things!
YES! A headshot always works! Oh! The slug is… climbed out of the broken head and squiggled off.
Fuck, this is scary! The family trying to smash into the truck?
“We’re itchy”. I fucking HATE poison ivy. I used to get it so bad every summer when we went to the cape. One year I slept in sweatpants the night that it broke out and wept, and when I woke up my legs were glued into the fibers of my pants. I had to peel them off in the shower, and I lost a layer or two of skin doing it. Another time I got it all over my face so bad that I was asked if I fell off a skateboard- ie- road rash on my face.
Oh! Blindsided!
Oh! Shoe-Shot!
Lizard puked!
“What’s with the spitting?”
“My easygoing nature is getting sorely tested.”
Oh. The iron stake through the neck… and then head-kicking…
All the zombies marching down the road yelling “Starla”…
“Your momma called. Said the toilet’s all backed up again. Wants you to come over soon as you’re finished there.” It only gets better from here.
“I told your secretary to pack Mr. Pibb. It’s the only coke I like.” See, this here is a Mid-West thing. All fucking soda’s are cokes. “You want a coke?” “Sure!” “What kind” (Puzzled) “What… kinds do you have?” “Got sprite, orange, dr. pepper, squirt.”
The argument about the meaning of “a Martian”
“It’s a conscious disease.”
“If I wasn’t about to shit my pants I’d be fascinated.”
Oh, fuck…
Scary and gross!
I do love a chevy squarebody though…
The zombie preacher is a classic. The end is fucking neigh!
We’ve got a maybe theory involving the grenade.
Which starts with a rock.
Sneaking into the police station…
Fuck! Startled!
What kind of cannibal animal is that? Is that a dog? I think it’s a dog? Or a deer? The thing was pretty vague. Could have done that better.
Carla’s getting the… Madonna music video treatment.
Oh… the zombies are massacring the populace with their green spit.
“Thanks for saving my ass back there. But if we live, I’m gonna tell it the other way around. Like I saved you.”
That’s sloppy nailing.
That’s a whole lot of talking from the other side of the door…
This is gross.
“Don’t you look at me like that!”
Never seen a self-conscious zombie
Back to white seduction…
Zombies feeding. Very well done.
Dude! He’s… a zombie… by peer pressure? He’s not infected! That’s fucking gross! Never seen a human go zombie just for the hell of it.
“Well now that is some fucked up shit.” Yes. Yes it it. It’s like Jabba The Hutt by osmosis.
This thing is insane. Gross insane.
Grant has turned into the… worst thing imaginable. He makes Jabba the Hutt look like a runway model.
That was a great A for effort, but…
This’s a bit chaotic right now.
Mal’s shooting zombies, Grant is… many people.
Mal just lost the grenade.
There’s a huge horde of zombies approaching.
Couches had been flung.
Mal has been stabbed.
Propane…
And… 3 minutes later, I really have no idea what to say.
There’s red. Everywhere.
Grant exploded. Everywhere.
Dead bodies everywhere.
So, it was a deer. I’m glad it wasn’t a dog. But, come on. Why did they have to kill another dog?
Oh. And if you wait all the way through the credits, they take out a cat, too. I’m not a huge cat fan, but I’m on enough of a rant that I’m going to choose to take offense.
————End Transmission——————–
Introduction
Introduction
To begin, I have seen this. Not recently enough to remember it. Not as recently as I Am Legend, even, I Would Wager. But that doesn’t mean that I want to see another version of Slither where they find some reason to kill another German Sheppard. ‘Cause that’s what they’re going to do when they remake I Am Legend.
That’s what my fear is, at least. It didn’t even do that well in the theaters, I don’t think. If I recall, and I should be the last person allowed to do so if there was ever anyone else present, I think I was siked (psyched) for months for it to come out, and then we had to drive out of Portland and out to Hillsboro or something to some multi-multi-plex or something like that. And then all I got to see was crappy CGI zombie monsters and a really cool dog die.
And you know what, Will the Fresh Prince Smith, you’re a damn good enough actor that you can really sell a dog’s death. So much so that you know you shouldn’t. If you ever did Old Yeller, you know you’d freight elevator express straight to hell, or whatever Paxton says. I think there were two different versions of that movie before you came along and made yours, and I don’t think that Vincent Price OR Charlton Heston (Hope I got those right) decided to kill a beloved pet.
No- they did manly things, like drink whiskey and light fires. Well, Charles Heston did stuff like that. I think Vincent Price did laudanum and consorted with Cthulhu. Will, though, man… Parents just don’t understand and neither do I in this instance. You never kill the dog. Even whathisname Magic Mike evidently realized this with whatever movie he just came out with called Dog. I think.
And then Sam… Not Kingston… Sam… Shit. Who was the short little fat guy who screamed his way though a cover of Wild Thing? Sam… Shit. But the Sam I mean is the dude who plays the narrator for The Dude. Sam… white mustache. Well, he said some crappy things about Dog, and I have no idea if Dog is worth seeing, but even if it isn’t it’s my understanding that Sam said things in a way that aren’t ok even if the sediment- or sentient- is agreed with. (sentiment)
What happened to DJ Jazzy Jeff? I hope things went better for him than they did Flavor Fav. I think he once got arrested for firing a revolver at his neighbor who was mowing the lawn. I’d be that kind of celebrity. I’d happily be that kind of celebrity. I don’t think it’s going to be long before we have some sort of “hunt a celebrity” system, where people chase clout and importance and social recognition by being the person who got which so and so celebrity. I can’t wait.
We came inches away from it with Princess Diana. We lost the momentum gained from Lennon. Who goes after a president with a .22 snub nose revolver? I think that’s what they guy who took a run at Regan used. For Jodie Foster. See? Only bad things come from movies where you kill a dog.
Old Yeller… I remember reading that book and getting fucking torn up inside over that poor dog. I would have been much fucking happier if the ending read something like “And as I felt the mountain lion’s worrying jaws finally find purchase on the base of my skull, out of the corner of my eye I saw Yeller’s tail, disappearing into the bush and headed home. Then the shaking began. Such short, intense, violent shaking that I lost control of whether my eyes were open or closed. It just didn’t go on long enough, and soon, open or closed, they saw nothing but black. Nothing but quiet darkness and the comforting, resolute knowledge that my faithful canine companion was safe.”
See? Something like that is way better than the bullshit torture-porn crap that they actually included in the book. You know what Old Yeller is? It’s the fucking Saw meets Touristas of children’s literature. I haven’t seen either of those- well, I did see Saw, but I did a lot of weirder, and frankly, much wronger things in undergrad than just watch some bullshit movie.
I didn’t do anything remotely closely as evil as unleashing Old Yeller on generations of children. Little fuckers just want to read, give them something they’re gonna enjoy! “Billy the happy-pidge and his journey to fair play land”… And it’s a bout a fat kid who goes and hangs out with a bunch of other randomly shaped kids who play merit based games and everyone wins some and loses some and no-one gets their parents involved or questions anyone else’s sexuality or ability to break who’s nose but they’ll never actually get their nose broken ‘cause they always know when the adults are going to be around.
Or how about a story about a cookie that keeps growing into two cookies so everyone has no choice but to keep giving cookies to their friends? A friend of mine was once working on a story about someone with a magical fucking octopus living in their porch! There’s better shit to feed children than eviscerated animals!
You want that kinda shit, you take a knife and a piglet and your own child down to the corner of 1st and main and you do what you think you need to do and we’ll see what people think. My wife is going through some new oils that we got and one is called Dogtrap and she just joked that it looked liked dog crap, which it kinda does, but then that got us talking about Alaskan weed- or rather- Alaskan oil, like, for dabs.
What the fuck is up with it? Why does it all smell A: The Same, and B: Like Dog Shit? Really? We were all totally stoked to check out Alaskan smoke ‘cause we’re in love with the idea of the place as well as the place itself, so when we got a chance to buy a bunch of dabs for our road-trip across the state we stocked up… but jesus, it all smelled, and smoked, and tasted exactly the same.
Like, like I said… dog shit. So now I got a movie to watch, that hopefully has nothing to do with either… Uh… I am Legend, or Old Yeller. Because the common fucking denominator is a dead puppy, and that’s something that should be illegal to use for literary purposes. Just like how they totally rethought animal’s role and rights in the creation of movies after that French wacko killed all those horses doing The Charge of The Light Brigade, it’s time we re-look at if making children cry and have nightmares is really the right path to promoting literacy.
‘cause if it is, other shit that scarred me was the old black and white The Hand movie, as well as Michael Jackson’s Thriller, The Never Ending Story, PeeWee’s Great Adventure, and… fuck. There was another one I wanted to include in this list of shit that’s not ok for children. Slither, I don’t know if you’re ok for children. “A small town is taken over by an alien plague, turning residents into zombies and all forms of mutant monsters. From the director of ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’.”
I have seen this, but I don’t remember it- I don’t think I do, at least. The picture Amazon is showing me is a dude in a suitcoat with a huge nose and thinning hair. He looks mildly offended. I’m trying to remember what the monsters in this are. I think the zombies- although of alien creation, are pretty good zombies. I think they want to eat brains. But I don’t remember what the monsters are.
Also, Guardians of the Galaxy came out in 2014, so a good 8 years after this. I’m not sure what the rules are, but I don’t think you’re supposed to claim shit in that direction. Like, when G.O.G. came out, they could rightfully have said “By the same cat that brought you Slither, dig it?” and it’d be true, but… movie copy is supposed to be written prior to the movie’s release and then stuck with, you know?
I mean, you could probably re-dub and re-spin a bunch of the old classics, but you don’t do this- you keep it based on what and when it was created. Intent is everything. So I’m saying that if this movie is a 4.5 star with an IMDB of 6.5… Well, the 6.5 could be higher. I’m not sure I could be.