Stunning videos capturing a meteor flashing across Europe went viral over the weekend. Luckily, the European Space Agency concluded that the likelihood of any meteorites being found on Earth was low, which is great news considering that meteorites crash-landing on our planet spells massive trouble when it comes to horror.
The Blob, Creepshow, and Night of the Creeps all showcase the perils of meteorites unleashing an alien menace upon an unsuspecting population, and the niche subgenre gets perfectly encapsulated in filmmaker James Gunn’s Slither. One small, unassuming piece of space rock decimates a small South Carolina town through an evolving parasitic invader.
The Setup
Writer/Director James Gunn packs his feature debut with an almost dizzying amount of references in his love letter to horror, beginning with the Sam Raimi shaky cam that tracks the meteorites crashing in the opening sequence. The horror nods and cameos keep coming as Gunn introduces the sleepy town of Wheelsy, South Carolina.
Not much happens in Wheelsy, as evidenced by police chief Bill Pardy (Nathan Fillion) sleeping on his shift and missing the meteor streaking above him. Or in the way that Starla Grant (Elizabeth Banks) doesn’t notice how distracted or bored her students are in class as she teaches her latest lesson. She herself may be a bit distracted with attempting to reignite the spark in her marriage with Grant Grant (Michael Rooker). It’s a town caught up in its mundanities, so woefully underprepared for the encroaching madness. Then again, there’s no preparation for an extraterrestrial parasitic invasion.
When Starla denies Grant’s passionate advances, he heads to the bar and finds a willing partner instead in Brenda (Brenda James). Their dalliance in the woods leads to the discovery of the meteorite, or at least the fleshy blob within it. Grant does what all horror movie characters should never do; he prods at it until it ejects a strange little stinger that burrows into his torso and travels up until it finds purchase in his brain matter. The small parasite, now absorbed into his body, takes over and begins its plot to consume the world.
The Monster Reveal
Instead of keeping the monster relegated to the shadows until its proper reveal, Slither offers an evolving monster that delivers a progression of gnarly monster surprises. The tiny stinger that emerges from its fleshy spacecraft transforms Grant Grant slowly over the course of the film, eroding his humanity into a tentacled mass of flesh, slime, and teeth.
This is a monster transformed in stages, first with strange rashes around the parasite’s entry point on Grant’s chest, then with the dual tentacles that emerge from it to impregnate Brenda. Grant only continues to grow more monstrous as Brenda swells to an inhuman mass with an insatiable appetite for meat, only to get ripped apart from the inside by the slug-like offspring she “births.” It’s Grant’s offspring that cause the most devastation in the town as they attach to the town’s residents, rendering them zombie-like appendages of Grant’s.
Grant’s final form comes in the third act. Starla and Bill make their attempt to thwart the parasite’s bid for Earth’s destruction within the Grant household, now rendered as unrecognizable as Grant thanks to the growing web of tentacles, flesh, and human bodies.
The Death Toll
Let’s just say this is one lethal parasite with a kill count that’s impossible to track. Grant murders most of Wheelsy’s pets, livestock, and wild animals to feed an impregnated Brenda, though some of these kills make it on screen, too.
Most of the gory deaths on-screen are caused by Grant’s slug offspring; invading living hosts is gruesome work. If their host doesn’t get killed in the process, they become extensions of Grant’s hive mind and develop unique defense mechanisms- like acidic spit they hurl to quickly incapacitate prey. Only three survivors walk away from the carnage by the film’s end, with almost a hundred bodies laid out on Grant’s lawn.
An entire town, including its animal population, is effectively decimated by the time the credits roll. A quick glimpse into the alien’s past reveals a history of traversing various planets and leaving them uninhabitable husks after consuming all lifeforms. There’s no definitive number for Grant’s death toll, but it is undoubtedly quite high.
The Impact
Slither didn’t exactly set the box office on fire when it was released in theaters on March 25, 2006. The horror comedy failed to recoup its budget despite solid critical praise. Like most cult classics, the fanbase for Slither developed over time, but the early accolades did help catapult Gunn’s directorial career. Gunn went on to become a major player in the MCU before taking on DC as CEO of DC Studios, and Slither serves as a solid showcase for the filmmaker’s style, sense of humor, and recurring themes.
For all the gross-out gags in Slither, it’s love that saves the day. That central theme of love runs rampant in Gunn’s work and it’s what grounds the filmmaker’s zanier impulses.
Where to Watch
You can stream Slither on Tubi, but it’s also available on Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital.
In television, “Monster of the Week” refers to the one-off monster antagonists featured in a single episode of a genre series. The popular trope was originally coined by the writers of 1963’s The Outer Limits and is commonly employed in The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and so much more. Pitting a series’ protagonists against featured creatures offered endless creative potential, even if it didn’t move the serialized storytelling forward in huge ways. Considering the vast sea of inventive monsters, ghouls, and creatures in horror film and TV, we’re borrowing the term to spotlight horror’s best on a weekly basis.
The post James Gunn’s ‘Slither’ Evolved Its Meteoric Parasite into a Monstrous Gross-Out Horror Comedy appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.