Slither: Critic Reviews

So sue me, sometimes after a day of enjoying Belgian film-festival prizewinners, I like to relax with copious servings of horror-flick slime and a good visual joke involving squids, girls in bathtubs, and overhead cameras.

What makes Slither work is how nimbly it slaloms from yucks to yuks, slip-sliding from horror to comedy and back again on its gore-slicked foundation.

The film brought me little pleasure, but it revived happy memories of a laidback caper movie also called Slither, starring Peter Boyle and James Caan, made in 1973.

For those who enjoy entertaining gross-out horror flicks, Slither satisfies. The squeamish should probably keep their distance.

Slither isn't scary, it's just what one character says when she spots the slugs from outer space, Grooooosss. And we don't mean that in a good way.

At last: the mutant alien redneck zombie movie the world has been waiting for.

Gunn doesn't reinvent the wheel but he does tighten its spokes a bit with some terrifying sequences and a witty, deadpan screenplay.

In a year that is heavily front-loaded with horror movies, Slither is easily the best in the class.

Slither is seriocomic horror, alternating laughs with gooey, creepy scares.

Slither tries (too hard) to cop the tongue-in-cheek silliness that marks some of the best examples of the genre and ultimately collapses atop itself. It's no Humanoids From the Deep.

There is some humor in the plot, effective action and scenes that entertain us because of how stupidly the characters behave.

It's not Ernst Lubitsch, but the space-slug/mutant-zombie fiesta called Slither has an actual sense of humor to go with its voluminous alien ook.

Gross-out horror comedy is my least favorite genre, but this movie's so skillful I have to take my hat off to it.

Like Tremors, only ickier, Slither is a tongue-in-cheek horror flick that skewers the genre while delivering seat-squirming scares.

There is a huge amount of bloodshed, but it's so comically tongue-in-cheek that it's hard to take offense -- it's more gross than gory.

A great bloody joy of B-movie madness, Slither is a hilarious concoction of gore and wisecracks that offers plenty of nods to horror history while maintaining enough slimy integrity to stand, or rather, slither, on its own.

Slither is an enjoyable stab at spoofing the genre, but it won't send you away feeling completely slimed, which in this context is another word for satisfied.

A gleefully nasty and ingeniously twisted horror-comedy.

If the horror scenes are formulaic, the audience will eat up the many jokey interludes the way the zombies feast on possum.

This writing-directing debut from the guy who concocted that rip-off known as Dawn of the Dead isn't that scary, and it isn't nearly as funny as he seems to think it is.

The problem with making a smart horror parody -- and James Gunn's Slither is a smart horror parody -- is that it's kind of like doing a virtuoso performance of 'My Way.' The skill of execution tends to be eclipsed by the tedium of the material.

There's something winning about this grab bag of orally fixated invertebrates and mucus-covered Noids.

Slither starts out slowly; the first half-hour drags. Things pick up, however, and once Slither slides in its groove, the movie crackles with campy energy.

Just when it seemed like the zombie cannibal/parasite from outer space horror comedy had pretty much run its course, along comes Slither, a particularly lively addition to the remarkably durable undead genre.

Slither is a gross, disgusting, but undeniably amusing treat laden with homages and in-jokes.