Slither (R)
Gross-out comedy-horror mix isn't for kids.
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Seen the movie?
Movie details
- Studio: Universal Pictures, Universal Pictures
- Directed By: James Gunn
- Cast: Michael Rooker, Nathan Fillion, Elizabeth Banks
- Running Time: 96 minutes
- Release Date: 03/31/2006
- Video/DVD Release Date: 10/24/2006
- Genre: Horror
- MPAA Rating: R
- MPAA Explanation: for strong horror violence and gore, and language.
Parents need to know
Parents need to know that this film features graphic gross-out horror and comedy and violence against animals (a cow, deer, dogs, and cats appear as bloody corpses). Grant becomes increasingly gory and bloody, and his body changes with extreme makeup and prosthetics (eventually, he's expanded so much that he fills a room, absorbing other bodies into his own, including one that shows his naked bottom as he sinks into the fleshy mass). The slugs jump into people's mouths, the people turn into flesh-eating zombies (some of these eating images are very gross). Characters shoot guns and stab at the monster. Characters smoke cigarettes and drink in a bar and a party, and Grant drinks once at home.
Families can talk about the continued popularity of gross-out and horror movies. What is it about these kinds of movies that fascinates people, especially teens?
Families can talk about the continued popularity of gross-out and horror movies. What is it about these kinds of movies that fascinates people, especially teens?
Message
Social Behavior:
No one is a great role model.
Consumerism:
Drugs/Alcohol/Tobacco:
Mayor smokes cigarettes; characters drink in the karaoke bar; Grant pours himself a drink; Starla holds a glass of wine.
Violence
Violence is comic and gross-out: alien-infected husband tries to strangle his wife with an elastic-long arm; alien-impregnated woman swells up into a giant ball and explodes, spewing blood-red slugs everywhere; slugs enter human and animal mouths (penetration imagery); infected humans become flesh-eating zombies; humans shoot at slugs and the zombies created by slugs-in-humans; girl uses curling iron to burn slug that attacks her; finale involves wife stabbing her now completely grotesque-big-mass-of-pink-yuckiness husband, his throwing her and other folks against walls, a big explosion of alien goo and blood.
Sex
The alien "" is built on sexual metaphor (penetrations, convulsions that vaguely resemble climaxes, and lustful comments about marriage and procreation); Starla is designated a sexual object (ogled by her students and men); man rejected in bed by his wife picks up another woman in a bar (they kiss, then he's attacked by the alien); this woman says she wanted to have sex with him back when she was 10 or 11; alien-infected man has "" with a woman, his tentacles emerging from his belly to penetrate her belly (gurgly fluid-pumping sounds); sexual slang ("--k," "---y"); adolescent girl in tub approached by a slug in the water, with camera point of view through her legs.
Language
Lots: at least 30 f-words, repeated s-words, various other profanities ("," damn," ""); sexual slang ("--k," "---y").
Common Sense says
What's the story?
Reviewed by Cynthia Fuchs
Starla (Elizabeth Banks) has settled. Obviously perky, probably sweet, and certainly exciting for her high school students in her tight little skirts, she's also married to the lunkiest guy in town, Grant Grant (Michael Rooker). Starla has a more suitable partner in handsome sheriff Bill Pardy (Nathan Fillion), who's had a crush on her since they were kids. She only realizes this when Grant becomes infected by an alien and tries to consume the entire town's population. After Grant is zapped by an alien through his chest, he transforms, slowly at first, and then quickly: he craves raw meat. As he turns increasingly hideous, alien-Grant sends forth a horde of blood-red parasite slugs to infect humans: these slugs shoot themselves into people's mouths, and the host bodies then become flesh-eating zombies, staggering and lurching like movie zombies tend to do. In one extended sequence, the slugs infect a family, though teenaged daughter Kylie (Tania Saulnier) fights off the invasion long enough to be rescued by Bill, who arrives just in time to see her zombified family attacking the pickup truck in which she's trapped.
Is it any good?
Goofy and gross, SLITHER revisits the old alien invasion plot with comedic violence that might bother sensitive viewers. Suitably reluctant and arrogant at the same time, Bill is disinclined to shoot things. But he's also resourceful and careful about his image. He figures out that everyone who ingests slugs is connected to Grant (they all insist, sometimes speaking in unison, that "Marriage is a sacred bond"), and so the destruction of alien-Grant is the only way to end it. "I'll keep growin'," grrrs Grant, "'Til I'm everywhere, 'til I'm everything."
What Bill doesn't see is Grant's mirroring of himself: the guy who loves the girl so hard and so long and so hopelessly that he loses himself. Lucky for him, this loss of self becomes literal for Grant and his many extensions (all ugly, all pink and oozy, all soulless). It takes some serious devastation for Starla to see her proper partner, but Bill's still waiting.
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Parents and kids say
All Reviews
There are 5 reviews.
Lots of Creatures
Posted on 05/04/06 by Anonymous Kid contributor, age 15
Adult Reviews
There are 1 reviews.
Lots of Creatures
Kids Reviews
There are 4 reviews.
Posted on 05/04/06 by Anonymous Kid contributor, age 15
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