REVIEWED - SLITHER: A GRADUATE of the Troma school of no-budget tackiness, where he wrote and produced Tromeo and Juliet, James Gunn moved into the mainstream as a screenwriter on the two Scooby Doo movies and the recent remake of Dawn of the Dead. Turning director with Slither, Gunn eagerly parades his influences in a B-movie tribute that even has a character watching a Troma picture on TV.
It's surprising that any of the characters has ever seen a horror movie, given that they so frequently stumble into peril. When a sexually frustrated character named Grant Grant (Michael Rooker) meets a woman in a bar, they naturally go for a late night walk in the woods, blithely not noticing that a meteorite just landed there.
Grant makes for easy prey as the first victim of the hideous, extra-terrestrial creatures that invade his body. In what could be read as an allegorical spin-off from Super Size Me, he develops a truly voracious appetite for red meat, served raw. When his wife (Elizabeth Banks) recoils from his new, horribly disfigured look, he insists that it's only a bee sting.
The setting is Wheelsy, South Carolina, where the start of the deer hunting season is top of the social calendar, and it's only a matter of time before even the most homely residents are infiltrated by the slimy wrigglers and turned into flesh-hungry zombies.
Gunn employs grotesque special effects to jolt the viewer and, in moments of desperation, resorts to loud, abrupt bursts of soundtrack music. This inane movie, which treads a thin line between homage and deja vu, is sprinkled with deadpan humour, most amusingly delivered by a laidback police officer (played by Nathan Fillion from Serenity) and a foul-mouthed mayor (Gregg Henry).
