Slither - Preview
Preview by Jack Foley
AT A time when horror seems to be clambering over itself to gross-out audiences, Slither could well be the one to have people reaching for the sickbags fastest.
The film marks the directorial debut of James Gunn, the man who penned the recent successful remake of Dawn of the Dead.
It is set in the sleepy town of Wheelsy, America, which is populated by quaint, gentle, people-friendly folks who mind their own business. Just beneath the surface charm, however, something unnamed and evil has arrived and is growing.
No one pays much attention to the notices on telephone poles becoming clogged with missing pet flyers, or when one of the town’s richest citizens, Grant Grant, begins to act strangely.
But when farmers’ livestock turn up horribly mutilated and a young woman goes missing, Sheriff Bill Pardy and his team uncover the dark force laying siege to their town and come face-to-face with an older-than-time organism intent on absorbing and devouring all life on Earth.
The film stars Nathan Fillion (of Serenity) and Elizabeth Banks and is described as a dark, humorous amalgamation of John Carpenter’s The Thing, as well as Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Shivers.
Gunn, himself, is quoted as saying that ‘if somebody vomits during the film, I’ll consider that a standing ovation’. Sick? You bet. The trailer looks fun but doesn’t really tell the whole story. Aside from the macabre laughs, there are some genuinely sick effects just waiting to get those stomachs churning.
According to various reports, some 900 gallons of blood are estimated to have been used during the production while the director admits that the sheer amount of gory materials on-set was overwhelming at times.
Effects include an oversized woman who has swollen to a size of epic proportions, having been infested by the invading parasite, and a man with an oversized head who required about 40 pounds of prosthetic to create the effect.
One of the first human victims of Slither’s grotesque enemy is a man called Grant, for instance, who consequently develops an insatiable desire to mate and to eat flesh – beginning with household pets and moving on to humans.
Some of the scenes became so intense, while filming, that animal rights activists kept a close eye on proceedings.
But Gunn is determined to put the horror back into the horror genre and isn’t interested in ‘pussy-footing’ around the PG-13 market.
“In a horror movie, I don’t think anything is too far,” he recently told Hotdog magazine, commenting on the new wave of audience friendly horror films that have recently attracted girls as young as 13 to the multiplexes.
Slither, however, has been made with the die-hard horror nuts in mind. It is a shocker to rival the likes of Hostel and Saw 2 which truly sets out to unsettle and surprise.
The only word of warning that Gunn has for audiences, however, is that the film’s success could spawn a slow of copycat gross-out flicks.
“It’s like in the early 90s when Nirvana came out. They were this fantastic band with this new sound and everybody liked them. Then all of a sudden everybody started copying them and there were a million Nirvana rip-offs.”
Could we be set for Slither imitations and more masochistic mutilation a la Hostel? Don’t bet against it.
For now, though Gunn and his star, Nathan Fillian, invite viewers to sit back and enjoy another sick ride.
Slither opens on April 28.