For anyone who takes issue with James Gunn casting several actors in his DCU projects that have previously appeared in his Guardians of the Galaxy franchise, then anyone watching his 2006 gooey horror movie Slither will be astounded to find that he has been doing it much longer than that. For those who haven’t seen the sci-fi horror flick, then Tubi has you covered as it adds the brilliantly bloody movie to its free to stream library on December 1.
Slither is a gross-out film that taps into James Gunn’s love of low-budget, Troma-style, B-movie horrors that will make you both laugh and cringe as long as you have the stomach for it. It also includes two familiar faces from Gunn’s comic book universes in Nathan Fillion and Michael Rooker, two actors who have appeared in almost everything the director has touched in the last 25 years. The plot of Slither reads:
“Wheelsy is a small town where not much happens and everyone minds his own business. No one notices when evil slips in quietly but, when people find mutilated livestock and a woman goes missing, Sheriff Bill Pardy (Fillion) discovers an alien organism that threatens to devour all life on Earth.”
Although James Gunn is currently heading up one of the biggest movie franchises in the world as the joint CEO of DC Studios, his early days working for Lloyd Kaufman’s Troma Studios and his first directorial efforts were steeped in the kind of stomach-churning practical effects seen in movies like John Carpenter’s The Thing, The Blob, and Society. Slither is a movie that really allowed Gunn to tap into his love of the genre and everything that he saw in his first years in the industry, and in the main, it paid off.
‘Slither’ was a Critical Success but a Box Office Flop
Despite James Gunn bringing massive success to Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy franchise, he is being given a rough ride during his first years in charge of DC studios this was not helped by the summer’s release of Superman being widely seen as a disappointment despite a box office total of around $616 million.
Slither was a movie that should have been a box office hit. The film landed a impressive 87% from critics, although its 63% audience score suggested why the film ended up making just $12.9 million, less than its $15 million budget. While the movie was a flop, it’s cult classic status almost 20 years later is proof that box office performance is really just for the studio bigwigs, and any flop movie can find appreciation somewhere down the line.
Now, the movie is coming to Tubi in December, allowing fans and the uninitiated to sit down and get uncomfortable all over again or for the first time. Whether we will ever see Gunn return to tackle non-comic book movies again in the next decade seems unlikely considering how involved he seems to be with both writing and directing multiple DCU projects. However, when he does decide to return to the genre that made him, it will be a happy day for fans of movies like Slither.
- Release Date
-
March 31, 2006
- Runtime
-
95 minutes