Some movies just don’t initially catch on with audiences. When Slither (2006) hit theatres, it bombed big time. It debuted at number 8 at the box office and it’s totally box office was less than the production costs. The critics liked it though. The excuse given for the film’s failure was that the world wasn’t ready for a comedy-horror at that time.
It was a different story once the film hit DVD. It finally, slowly found it’s audience. Directed by James Gunn, the film stars Nathan Fillion as a town sheriff who finds himself up against some nasty critters.
It seems a meteor has crashed landed near a small town and local resident Michael Rooker has become infected by an alien life form. Wife Elizabeth Banks notices there is something wrong with Rooker but he manages to keep her oblivious to his new murderous habits. Through a series of horrible and disgusting events that I won’t describe (it’s better to just watch the movie) hundreds of slug-like creatures are released upon the unsuspecting town turning them into zombies, while Rooker keeps transforming into, well..
Every so often the horror genre needs a good gory comedy-horror. The comedy offsets the horrible, horrible gory scenes that occur throughout the film. Gunn borrows from several horror movies, most noticeably David Cronenberg’s Shivers (which I could only watch once) but manages to make it’s self original enough that you can just enjoy the carnage as it unfolds.
One of the reasons the movie probably failed was the terrible trailers that advertised the movie. This is the best of a bad lot.
