SLITHER (2006)

Studio:       Scream Factory
Director:    James Gunn
Writer:       James Gunn
Producer:  Paul Brooks, Eric Newman
Stars:     Nathan Fillion, Elizabeth Banks, Tania Saulnier, Brenda James, Don Thompson, Jennifer Copping, Jenna Fischer, Haig Sutherland, Gregg Henry, Michael Rooker

Review Score:

---

Summary:

An alien organism infects a small South Carolina town, transforming residents into monstrous mutant creatures.

---

Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

A meteorite lands in the forest outside the hunting town of Wheelsy, South Carolina.

After his wife Starla Grant, a teacher at Earl Bassett Community School, spurns his sexual advances, Grant Grant storms off to a local bar. Grant meets Brenda Gutierrez, who seduces Grant into accompanying her to the woods where they discover the meteorite cracked open. An alien organism burrows into Grant’s brain through his chest, putting him in a possessed trance. Overtaken by the alien, Grant returns home, eats all of the meat in the refrigerator, and begins building a nest in the basement.

Feeling guilty in the morning, Starla makes love to her husband. Starla comments on the wound in Grant’s chest. Grant goes to the grocery store to purchase a truckload of raw meat. Starla notices that Grant padlocked the door to the basement. A sudden pain comes over Grant. He stumbles outside the house and kills a random dog.

Grant gradually begins transforming into a monstrous mutant. Parasitic tentacles emerge from his chest looking to feed, but Grant stops them from attacking his wife.

With Grant MIA, Starla goes alone to the Deer Cheer celebration at Henenlotter’s Saddle Lodge. Deputy Wally comments on how police chief Bill Pardy still harbors a longtime crush on Starla. Irritable mayor Jack MacReady kicks off the start of hunting season for the assembled townspeople.

Grant goes to see Brenda. He attacks her with alien tentacles that dig into her stomach and possess her. Grant captures Brenda and holds her in a remote forest barn where he feeds her raw meat.

When Starla notices Grant’s early stage transformation, he assures her that he already consulted Dr. Karl. Starla later calls Dr. Karl and learns Grant lied.

Bill and Wally come to Starla’s house looking for Grant. They explain that Brenda went missing and neighbors reported seeing Grant going into her house.

After Bill and Wally leave, Starla’s growing suspicions compel her to break into the basement. Starla discovers a nest full of dead animal carcasses.

Grant returns to the house in a partially transformed state and attacks Starla. His tentacles begin burrowing into her, but Starla pushes Grant away. Responding to her earlier phone call, Bill returns with several deputies who are all shocked at the sight of Grant in mutated form. Grant flees into the woods.

3 Days Later – The mayor applies pressure on the police to find Grant. After being called to a ranch with more dead animals, Bill deduces a pattern indicating where Grant might strike next. Bill organizes a posse with Jack to begin a stakeout on Otis Stutemyer’s property. Starla insists on coming along.

Completely transformed, Grant shows up at the ranch and slaughters a cow. Starla attempts to talk to him. Grant splits one of the posse members in half before slithering away as the posse opens fire.

Bill and the posse track Grant to the barn. Inside, they find Brenda transformed into a giant gelatinous egg. Brenda bursts, unleashing thousands of sentient slugs. The slugs swarm the posse and wriggle down the throats of anyone with an open mouth.

Slugs slither to the Strutemyer house. While she is in the bathtub, a slug begins crawling into Kylie Strutemyer’s mouth. Before she pulls it out, Kylie briefly joins the hive mind of the slugs, experiencing the consciousnesses of both Grant and the alien organism that possessed him. Katie escapes outside. She hides in a truck that becomes swarmed by her possessed parents and two younger sisters.

While Bill goes to his patrol car to radio paramedics, Starla, Jack, and Deputy Margaret Hooper remove the bodies of those killed by the slugs from the barn. Wally suddenly resurrects. He speaks to Starla in Grant’s voice, proclaiming his love for her. Other infected posse members also begin resurrecting.

The hive mind posse members attack Margaret. Starla shoots Wally. A horde of possessed people chase Jack and Starla into the woods.

Bill sees the commotion at the Strutemyer house. He rescues Kylie from her family. While driving away with Kylie, Bill comes across Jack and Starla in the road and rescues them too.

Kylie tells everyone in the car what she experienced when the slug briefly possessed her. She explains how everyone infected becomes Grant, but also the alien, who goes from world to world impregnating, eating, or taking over its victims. Starla dubs it “a conscious disease.”

Bill crashes his car when he is led into a trap by possessed police dispatcher Shelby. Townspeople drag Starla and Jack away from the wreck. Bill and Kylie escape.

Bill reasons that he can destroy the hive by destroying Grant. A transformed deer attacks Bill while he tries retrieving a grenade from a police station locker. Kylie rescues Bill, who jokes he will rescue Kylie when he recounts the story later. Bill retrieves the grenade. He and Kylie head toward Grant’s house, where the possessed people are assembling the bodies.

Jack recovers in Grant’s basement to find infected townspeople feeding. Jack escapes the basement only to be attacked by Grant’s tentacles and transformed.

Starla also recovers. She exits the bedroom and sees her house turned into a bloody shrine devoted to her. Starla finds Grant’s enormous mutant form occupying the entire living room. Infected people continue assimilating with Grant’s bulbous body. Starla appeals to Grant in order to get close enough to stab him with her hairbrush. Grant’s tentacles swat her away.

Bill and Kylie fight their way to Starla. Immediately after his request to be euthanized, Bill obligingly shoots Jack in his mutated face.

Following a frantic fight, the grenade rolls into the pool outside and explodes in the water. Grant’s tentacles begin burrowing into Bill. Bill manages to pierce a propane tank with one of the pointed tentacles. The tentacle fills Grant’s body with gas. At Bill’s direction, Starla recovers Bill’s dropped handgun and fires. Grant explodes. The townspeople collapse.

Bill, Starla, and Kylie exit the house as dawn breaks. Later, a cat is seen sniffing around Grant’s brain as it lies pulsing on the floor. An alien tentacle emerges and pierces the cat.

---

Review:

Major mainstream audiences tasted filmmaker James Gunn’s personal blend of action, suspense, drama, and humor en masse with the “Guardians of the Galaxy” films.  Horror fans were already aboard the bandwagon a decade earlier, when the still-developing director was really starting to slide comfortably into the stylistic skin that would make his name.

When you revisit 2006’s “Slither” with the knowledge of where James Gunn would go from there, it’s practically a no-brainer to see why Disney entrusted him to steward the cosmic corner of their multibillion-dollar Marvel Cinematic Universe.  Whether it is comedy that is concurrently campy and witty, explosive scenes defying their outrageousness to also be realistically grounded, or characters who are likable and loathable in the same moment, Gunn is a magician at melding multiple moods into every element.

No matter how many disparate tones are in play, Gunn finds surprising ways to balance them using perfectly cast actors, energetic editing, and intelligent writing.  That ability is the secret ingredient in a recipe for concocting films that are fun, funny, and ferocious all at once.

Gunn cut his teeth in the trenches at Troma, and some of that brand’s trademark sense of splattery silliness is certainly evident throughout “Slither.”  But there is just as much Roger Corman and Joe Dante in the movie as there is Lloyd Kaufman and the Toxic Avenger.  With the way its tongue stays in cheek without easing off the gas in the creature carnage department, “Slither” comes about as close as any contemporary genre film can to capturing the feel of a 1950s Saturday matinee monster movie in 21st-century form.

“Slither’s” plot is pulled from the same summertime drive-in vein as “The Blob,” “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” even “Night of the Living Dead.”  A meteorite crash-lands in a forest outside the rinky-dink town of Wheelsy, South Carolina.  Wheelsy is one of those folksy little burgs where everyone knows everyone, the start of hunting season calls for a town-wide celebration, and Bud Light is the best beer you’ll find while line dancing at the local country tavern.

Problems with his wife Starla (Elizabeth Banks) send Grant Grant (not a typo) into said forest with a floozie met at said tavern.  Curiosity gets Grant (Michael Rooker) to poke at the meteorite and that curiosity is rewarded by an alien organism poking back.  Possessed by the parasite, Grant gradually transforms into a monster requiring raw meat, and as many human drones as possible, to feed.

Starla’s troubled marriage is now troubled even more, and in a manner no one could have imagined.  Looking to save Starla’s fair skin from her newly villainous husband is police chief Bill Pardy (Nathan Fillion in one of his most Nathan Filliony roles), who has crushed on Starla since their school days together.

Also in the mix are irascible mayor Jack MacReady (Gregg Henry), an assortment of bumpkin deputies, and a ranch family whose teenage daughter Kylie proves to be unexpectedly resourceful.  With the players in place, the stage is set for both gags and gore as humans take on mutants in a bloody battle for survival.

“Slither” willfully winks so much at its audience, one might think the movie is having a seizure.  Quick hits of humor arrive in “blink or you’ll miss ‘em” bits such as snarky signs displayed in backgrounds or certain slouches of body language.  Virtually every street, business, or person’s last name is some sort of homage to real or fictional horror icons, offering an intensive Easter egg hunt for devoted fright film fans.

Probably no one involved with the film would quibble over its classification as a horror/comedy.  Still, it might be more accurate to say that “Slither” has a sense of humor instead of being an uproarious riot, or even something along the lines of “Zombieland” or “Shaun of the Dead.”  As funny as it is, and as impossible as its premise might be, “Slither” stays relatively levelheaded thanks to performers using characterizations to entertain without turning into clownish caricatures.

Practical and CGI effects mesh seamlessly.  It’s often tough to tell where one ends and the other begins.  In fact, the most dated thing about the film is the fact that it comes from a time when big studios such as Universal gave fresh creative voices 15 million dollars to make a hybrid genre movie, which is a risk not often taken since.

“Slither’s” poor box office returns proved why that is.  Yet longtime and newcomer fans of the film know that despite its initially disappointing performance, “Slither” holds up better than many wide-release scary movies within a five-year radius.

Not every joke lands (they never do).  The story may be too slim at times.  But “Slither” has horror, humor, and heart, all three of which come through in just about every frame.

NOTE: There is a post-credits scene.

Review Score:  75

---

Scream Factory Collector’s Edition: “Slither’s” previous home video release was already loaded to bear with as many Special Features as could fit on a disc, all of which reappear on the Blu-ray edition.  Leave it to Scream Factory however, to always go the extra mile by creating several pieces of new content to ensure a package so ridiculously comprehensive, no fan could fathom needing anything else.

NEW Audio Commentary with James Gunn, Nathan Fillion, and Michael Rooker: Three key pieces of the band are back together for an all-new commentary track.  An offhanded joke about Canada, where “Slither” was filmed, being a preferable political climate to America proves the track was recorded in 2017.

This commentary carries the great feeling of watching the film with three true friends whom you have also known for years.  The men catch up (“That’s so-and-so!  How’s she doing now?”), swap stories from the set, and playfully rib Michael Rooker at every opportunity they can get.  I can’t imagine James Gunn being more enthusiastic than he is here.  The trio gets so caught up in watching their own movie, they fall into the usual trap of pausing in strange silence.  Then they quickly catch themselves doing it and get right back to their fun, natural conversation.

NEW Interview – The Genesis of Slither with James Gunn: For nearly half an hour, James Gunn mentions memories ranging from casting to creating effects to the film’s critical reception and everything in between.  Diehard devotees probably already know the connection, but Gunn dishes on tidbits such as how “Slither” connects to the Marvel Cinematic Universe through a clever “Guardians of the Galaxy” cameo, and how Universal and Disney very coolly collaborated to make that link happen.  That’s only the tip of the iceberg regarding what Gunn has to reveal.

NEW Interview - The Other MacReady with Gregg Henry: At just over seven minutes, which includes quick clips of Henry’s most memorable moments from the movie, this interview is hardly indispensible.  But it is a nice bonus to catch up with “Slither’s” resident scene stealer, even if much of it is gushing over how great it is to work with James Gunn.

Audio Commentary with James Gunn and Nathan Fillion: If the new commentary isn’t enough, Scream Factory’s release contains the previous commentary recorded a decade earlier for those who want to run through the movie a third time, with the director and a star offering additional insight.

Deleted and Extended Scenes with Commentary by James Gunn: A dozen additional scenes make their way onto the disc, along with the option of adding Gunn’s voice in your ear to explain why they exist here and not in the main movie.

Visual Effects – Step by Step, Bringing Slither’s Creatures to Life, and Brewing the Blood: For FX fans, these three featurettes total not quite a half hour of looks at how CGI enhances specific shots, how artists molded the monsters, and how to create the same blood used on set in your own home.

Who Is Bill Pardy? and Slithery Set Tour with Actor Nathan Fillion:  Everyone loves Nathan Fillion.  These two five-minute pieces give his fans personal access to Fillion’s on-set antics, if only for fleeting glimpses.

The Sick Minds and Slimy Days of Slither, Lloyd Kaufman’s Video Diary, and Gag Reel: Rounding things out is a trio of lighthearted bonus bits, again almost a half hour’s worth, featuring bloopers, behind-the-scenes, and a day in the life of Troma’s head honcho preparing for his few seconds as an extra.

---