(2006) ***1/2
I grudgingly refer you to Summerisle's review of this movie, which I liked a lot more than he did. I'll admit I have a built-in bias, since I'm a huge Firefly fan and that series's frontman Nathan Fillion is the lead in this. But this movie is cool! Really.
I saw this when it came out, and at the time it seemed to me that it suffered from an affliction that hits many films in the genre: failure of niche. It was marketed as a horror/comedy, which is always a dicey-sounding mix for any horror fan. But comedy is a protean thing, and for me the laughs in this movie felt more like quick brushstrokes of character that leant the town more personality than the same amount of grim, serious dialogue could ever manage. Example: The interior establishing shot of the local watering hole, where we see a woman giving the stiffest-ever karaoke performance of The Crying Game, then the camera swings around and shows us the four people in the bar. Or after the alien-infected Grant takes off into the woods with one arm already starting to transform into a tentacle, the deputies track the subsequent livestock disappearances by sticking little squid stickers on the town map. I like this kind of funny better than the overt wink-to-the-audience variety (which seems to be at work in Feast, reviewed by JPX below). It allows for the coexistence of genuine emotion; when Elizabeth Banks delivers her "marriage is a sacred bond" speech to her now-monstrous husband, it may be ridiculous -- but it's a real scream she lets out when he passes the point of no return (pictured below...and no, that's not him).
I thought the alien life cycle was pretty creative, too. I can understand Summerisle's impression that it was unfocused, but I liked the touches they brought off. Grant the host organism transforms enough to impregnate that unfortunate woman whose bloated, bloody countenance has popped up on our blog again and again. She bursts alien slugs all over, and the slugs crawl into people's mouths and turn them into acid-spitting alien zombies. Here's where two of the details I love are introduced. First, all the zombies now think they're Grant himself, so when they go chasing after his wife they're all forlornly yelling "Starla! Starla!" Second, the teen bathtub girl manages to grab her slug's tail with her fingernails, and after a struggle pulls it back out -- but during the struggle she gets flashes of the alien's point-of-view, from when it was conquering its last planet up to possessing Grant. So when she joins the survivors, she's their source of info about the invader. Sleuthing out the problem can be a chore in horror movies sometimes, and I saw that as a smart, deft touch.
And since I've given up trying to not sound defensive about this movie, I need to rebut Summerisle's point about calling the military. See, they try, when the sherriff tells the switchboard girl (Pam, the receptionist from the U.S. version of The Office) to call the Center for Disease Control. But before she can summon the environment suits and machine guns, she's slugged. They're all slugged.
But as much as I want to prop up this movie, I can't rate it any higher than I have. It suffers from general thinness, there's a number of sub-satisfying CG effects, and the script shoots far lower than it could have. When the zombie folk have ripened enough, they merge with the main biomass, and upon seeing this happen Nathan Fillion says "now that is some fucked-up shit." Having seen what that actor's capable of, lines like that are pretty disappointing.
There are two thing about the ending that I love, but can't fully divulge. One is a line delivery by Fillion that includes the word "awesome." The other is a side effect of the climax, and it earns Slither some points for horror-y goodness.
21 comments:
I really dug this film and should have a review of it fairly soon.
Summerisle's just a grouchy old fart.
I forgot to mention the problem of the Air Supply song. There was an unfortunate time in my life when I really liked Air Supply (shortly before I learned I could like different music from my parents) and it's really easy for one of their tunes to get stuck in my head.
As soon as I think about the Slither song (Every Woman in the World), I need to quickly hum some quick antidote song. This morning I actually picked another Air Supply song by mistake. When my brain treats me like this I start hoping for an alien zombie slug to show up.
1) Your PARENTS liked Air Supply? (Okay, I admit I have one Air Supply song in iTunes, because of a "summer camp in 1981" mood I got into once).
What happened was, one day in 2002 or thereabouts I found myself humming the same four bars over and over; you know, "Hmmm hmmm hmm hmm... Hmmm hmmm"...and I finally asked myself, "What the hell is that, anyway?" After a few moments of trance-like forced remembering, I had arrived at "Dah dah... Dah dah dah... 'Now the night has gone... Now the night has gone.. away-ay-ay...' " and I snapped my fingers and said, "Summer camp!" remembering a time when certain people enviably wielded their prize possesion: a portable FM/AM radio/cassette player with built-in stereo speakers (and two condenser mics at the far ends of the faceplate! That was somehow the most drool-inducing part) and, somehow, when these 'boom-boxes' (as they later came to be known) were, when not blasting "Roxanne" by the Police or "Rosanna" by Toto, were all belting out this song about how "the night has gone.. away-ay-ay." A little research on the web confirmed that this was an Air Supply song, which, when obtained from Napster, turned out to actually be far, far worse than I could have possibly remembered: the song is way too fast, for one thing, and the singer sounds like a little girl inhaling helium while being prevented from running off to the bathroom to urinate (he really sounds like that!), not to mention that the instrumentation isn't exactly a Dust Brothers production. The song has a certain place in my heart nonetheless even if it isn't "the one that [I] love." And here I didn't even know about the big gross blobs of bloody flesh because, back then, I didn't frequent a blog populated by insane gentlemen such as yourselves.
--Marcel Proust
BTW, I'mnotMarcbutmyboyfriendis, thanks for the gracious message. I was inspired to go back and re-read the end of "The Raft" -- it's pretty clear that the "colors" are finally visible to him, meaning that the hypnotic effect is taking hold. However he's not immediately transfixed by the effect the way the girl was, possibly because he's so tired and frightened and he's not as much of a stone-cold idiot as that girl.
I just listened to "The One That You Love" (by Air Supply; see above) again.
Yeah, it still sucks. It's too bad, becasue that opening piano thing is still kind of haunting. I just can't stand the Billy Joel school of lyric-writing, wherein you're shamelessly, desperately pleading for scraps off the girl's table after she's clearly and irevocably dumped you. Supertramp did this too: "You're beautiful; I'm, um, good at whining; so let's hop in the sack! If you refuse, this confirms my worst existential fears about the nature of life and the universe (as I'm sure you loveless geeks in the audience can immediately understand)." Also, those pre-sampling synth strings are awful, and I seriously think the drummer dozed off in there somewhere.
gentlemen, i submit to you something you already know from other aspects of your life: be proud of your dorkery.
if air supply gets up in your soul, let yourself love it. let it love you. i am proud to say i can speak without irony about the career of phil collins. do i care that people hate him? absolutely not. when it comes to music, i'm a 900 pound gorilla and i sit wherever i damn well please.
so if there's a special someone out there who really is every woman in the world to you, sing that shit. and be proud.*
also, jordan, i don't know how closely the movie followed the text, but i'm guessing the fact that they were all stoned out of their gourds may have had something to do with the first girl's apparent idiocy. remember, in bad dreams, an entire colony full of hippies lit themselves on FIRE because they were high.
* - hahaha! just kidding! you like air supply? pansies!
"Actually like the shit you like" is my mantra! You get no argument from me.
That's why I'm so "anti-irony" and "anti-camp"; I think it's the equivalent of "keeping an illegal second set of accounting books" for your taste.
However, the Air Supply song just doesn't measure up. I've got "Rosanna" by Toto on my running (e.g. running in the park, with sneakers) playlist because it's a great pop song, and those guys are serious session musicians who know how to pace a middle eight and perform a solo.
That's right: I forgot they were high. King occasionally dips into the "punish the promiscuous and hedonistic" vibe that's the staple of so much horror.
Each SK short story collection is emblematic of the decade it was published; there's a distinctive '70s vibe to "Night Shift" and "Nightmares and Dreamscapes" has a Clinton-era searching quality to it. The stuff from "Skeleton Crew" is classic eighties: mean, nasty and quick.
"This morning I actually picked another Air Supply song by mistake."
It was The One That You Love! Except I only remembered the chorus:
Here I am
The one that you love
Dadda da duh dadda daaaaaaaa
Air Supply sucks. That guy's vocals are ridiculous.
I'm ashamed that Air Supply has gotten this much attention. You should all be very ashamed. Each and every one of you.
Also, don't listen to Octo & JPX, this movie eats.
Apparently I haven't made clear to certain other people on Horrorthon that I also think Air Supply sucks.
"The One That You Love" is one of the few radio songs from years ago that you go back and hear and realize, "I had no idea it was THIS BAD!" (Another example would be "Let's Go All The Way" by Sly Fox, which got by on a remarkable imitation of a Trevor Horn sound.)
I stil want one of those boomboxes even though they're useless antiques. I "still want" a lot of great unattainable machinery from my youth, including the twenty-pound IBM Selectric II with built-in correcting ribbon (with the stainless steel chassis) and several portable betamax machines.
WOOOHOOO! AIRSUPPLYTHON!
you all love air supply. i'm going to start a new air supply blog and you can all sign up for it with different handles so you can keep your desperate love of air supply hidden from a cruel, unforgiving world.
I would love one of those boomboxes too. Then maybe I'd get some street cred...
I did not address the switchboard operator but since Octo brought it to the table, I feel I have no choice. Making one attempt through an operator to get the CDC can hardly be considered a sufficient effort to alert the country of its impending demise. Between the mayor, the cop and the teacher, one of them should not only have a cell phone but also the smarts to use it to notify the proper authorities. I don’t care how small-town they are, they’re still connected to the world.
that begs the question though: are you anti-irony or are you "anti-irony?"
Hmmm, that's something like a point, Summerisle, but I submit you this: By the time they realize they need to make their own phone calls the mayor and the damsel are captured, their car is smashed and the town is overrun with zombies. That leaves the sherriff and the tub girl.
Tub girl was in the tub, so she can easily be excused for forgetting her phone, and I'm pretty sure the sherriff finds the office radio destroyed. His having an office and a staff and a radio to rely on could preclude his having a cell.
So to warn outsiders, they'd have to bail on saving the damsel and facing the monster in order to find a working car or land line or cell phone in a town overrun with slug zombies who have very possibly cut all the phone lines and, uh, hidden all the cell phones. And the cars.
I'm reaching a bit, since the zombies aren't actually shown doing any of that or even caring about remaining isolated, and the sherriff goes back to his office to get the hand grenade, not to check the radio. But, if you're not a cranky bastard it's as easy to consider that point covered as it is to declare the movie stupid and bad.
On another note, this was written and directed by the same guy who wrote the screenplay for the Dawn of the Dead remake.
Hmm. I may need to give it a 2nd viewing just to get my facts straight before refuting your argument. Don't think for a second that I'm not stubborn enough to do so!
I openly admit that I'm extremely hard on b-movies made since 1990 or so. Perhaps I didn't give this one a fair shake. At the very least it was original.
terima kasih
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