(Synopsis) The movie opens with a meteorite landing in the backwoods of the small town of Wheelsy. The bad news is that our atmosphere did not burn up everything inside the meteorite. One of Wheelsy's rich business men, Grant Grant (Michael Rooker),who is married to the young and beautiful high school biology teacher, Starla (Elizabeth Banks),finds a slow moving slimy thing behind the town bar. The slug stops moving as Grant moves closer, he becomes infected by the slug. Grant begins to change and evolve into a bloodthirsty meat-eating squid creature with a need to kill to maintain his life. Sheriff Bill Pardy (Nathan Fillion) and Starla must defeat this creature or the entire earth will be consumed.

(My Comment) Slither is a 1950's type B-grade horror/comedy movie scenario that has everything. A billion-year-old alien parasite from outer space with penetrating tentacles that sucks the life out of you, fast moving slugs that want to get inside your mouth, dogs and cows being eaten by human and deer zombies, an enormous mother glob, and the small town being terrorized by a monster. This is your classic B-grade movie that is a lot of fun watching. You will laugh from beginning to end. For budget reasons, it looks like they used the old standby, tomato ketchup, for blood. There are some scary moments, but most of the scenes are hilarious. If you want an enjoyable night and a good laugh, this is the movie to see. (Universal Pictures, Run time 1:36, Rated R)(8/10)

When I first saw this film at my old secondary school three years ago, I didn't like it. Then again I wasn't into comedy horrors as much then, now I don't mind them so much as long as it gives the shocks and the laughs. Re-watching it again, the film improved upon second viewing, however I still don't care for it that much. I guess it does reasonably well with what it aimed to do, which was pay homage to the outrageous splatter and surreal prosthetics of 80s horror. Now Slither grant you had its good points, but there are parts when it gets a little too ridiculous.

Slither is well made, with some interesting cinematography and the special effects are excellent and do well at delivering the shocks. Also the direction from James Gunn is competent and the acting is reasonable with Nathan Fillion, Elizabeth Banks, Jenna Fisher and Michael Rooker giving decent performances. The music by Tyler Bates also has its good moments and doesn't feel intrusive.

However, the story about a small town being taken over by an alien plague no matter how great the idea is is made up of a number of scenes/moments where it all gets rather ridiculous. The beginning sets the tone of the film well, but the Toxic Avenger clip was close to useless. While there were moments where I did chuckle, the script does have hits and misses. Which leads to my main problem with Slither, while there are elements of gore and horror, and there were parts that shocked me or made me chuckle, together the two elements don't quite gel. Another problem was the pacing, there are bits in the middle half that do go by very slowly.

Overall, has its moments but I would be lying if I said I was not disappointed. It was an improvement on re-watch, but I for one found it nothing special. At least it did okay with what it set out to do, even if it didn't quite work as well as it should have done. 5/10 Bethany Cox

So I followed up my watching of DISTURBIA with another Hollywood production that's an instantly recognisable updating of many older themes movies. There's a bit of a difference, though, as the guys who made SLITHER are clearly fans of the cheesy monster movie sub-genre and their movie is an updating, not of a Hitchcock classic, but of a number of slimy '80s B-movies. Off the top of my head, I counted the likes of THE DEADLY SPAWN, NIGHT OF THE CREEPS, THE BLOB, and Troma as various influences here. SLITHER is a rare beast, a comedy-horror hybrid that's actually funny and scary. I always hate to see creepy worms in films and the ones found here are some of the creepiest.

In essence, the plot is the same as in NIGHT OF THE CREEPS, except on a larger scale: this time, a whole town is taken over, and we see it. There's plenty of reference to the zombie flicks of old, too. One thing you notice is that the special effects are great, for the most part; the big tentacled beast is a bit overly CGI, but the worms look fine. The bathroom set-piece is particularly well down. The action-focused template keeps the movie drumming along nicely and it only put a foot wrong once for me (the gross-out scene involving the bloated woman was just too much, I thought). Nathan Fillion makes for a fine everyman hero, and Banks and Saulnier give him solid female support. Particularly good in the supporting cast is Michael Rooker, playing a guy who transforms into a monster. Rooker is usually typecast as a serial killer or a cop but he's given different material to work with here, and he's fine.

Anyway, the story is simple and the situations tense. There's gore, with heads getting blown apart, and lots of grisly sequences with victims getting impregnated/taken over by the slithering worms. The climax is formulaic, but amiable enough, and as a whole I enjoyed this movie. It makes a difference when a film is made by fans for fans – as was the case with the superior NIGHT OF THE CREEPS.