I arrive home from an afternoon of book shopping and a night at the flicks to the question many people like to ask: “What'd you see?”
I saw Slither. And with such news my sister recoils in confusion, the way that the audience did not. Those aren't the sorts of movies that I normally see. I mean, the films I usually see are European and independent, with subtle lines of dialogue and expressive directing.
The film in question scores highly on Rotten Tomatoes, and I have been going through a horror phase, ever since I realised how little I know about the genre. Was it what I expected?
As I sat in the dark with my friends I kept asking myself, why is this involving? The comedy pops up everywhere, from the excessive weaponry that the cops arm themselves with to the slug swimming up the bathtub. And yet, I cannot help wanting to see these rednecks come out alive.
What is so involving about this movie? I think the prime reason for its satisfaction is the colour and the way it handled exposition. That the teenage girl got to discover her information through a close encounter was a great choice on the part of director James Gunn.
The concept of a conscious virus is also a particularly interesting one. Darwin's 'survival of the fittest' is referenced early in the telling, so as to be something for us to think about. And what is most interesting is how the story resolves the conflict between the alien and human species. This creature consumes all life around it, adding to its consciousness, while the humans have to rely on their pack instincts. In the end, it is this separateness from one another that makes them the fittest.
Now this is very interesting, because the idea of consciousness also seems to emerge from the telling. That a creature could be made up of many smaller creatures is somehow believeable. We have something like that in the form of the city, but we do not have the complete single-mindedness that characterizes the creature in this film.
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