Slither

Far from being a two-bit hack director who approaches the genre as a way of making a quick buck, James Gunn is a jack-of-all-trades artist and Troma veteran – he wrote the screenplays for cult favorites such as “Tromeo & Juliet” (1996), for which he was also the co-director, and “Terror Firmer” (1999). He’s also a big fan of a subgenre of horror – body horror (aka biological horror) – which has been on a steady decline in the world of the Seventh Art. It’s no surprise, then, that Gunn is the director to deliver the anachronistic “Slither”, a catchall of sci-fi horror references spiced up with a pinch of “Made in Tromaville” cruelty that revels in sparing no one, pets and babies first and foremost.

A current of nostalgia reigns supreme in this film, drawing from post-Hayes Code cornerstones ranging from the bathtub scene from “Shivers” (1975) to zombies as social allegory (along the lines of George Romero), and then dive bombing into the crucible of tumescent flesh typical of the 1980s. If Grant’s metamorphosis is reminiscent of the cellular mutations Dr. Pretorius undergoes in “From Beyond” (1986), then the sticky agglomerate of bodies in the finale is a clear homage to Brian Yuzna’s “Society” (1989). And even when the nods and inside jokes might seem to have an earlier, more classic origin, as in the case of “The Blob” (1958) at the beginning, the storytelling “modus operandi” draws inspiration primarily from the 1980s (“Night of the Creeps” 1986, “The Curse” 1987, “The Blob” 1988).

A blend of excellent practical effects and ho-hum computer graphics, the abundant special effects don’t overwhelm, but allow a decent breather in narrative development while furnishing the requisite horror for this sort of film – even though that horror is diluted by a healthy dose of black humor that makes the story even more enjoyably frenzied than it would otherwise be.

At the end of the day, for Gunn, science fiction is simply a pretext to frame an innocuous diversion, a throwback barely shadowed by a veil of nostalgic longing for a cinema of bygone times.