Slotherhouse Review
Slotherhouse (link takes you to IMDb’s parent guide) is part satire, part movie with a meaningful message that is underrated. It’s about a sloth named Alpha and her rescuer, Emily. This film takes inspiration from the slasher genre without being exploitive. The trailer lets you know this is going to be a campy, fun flick with practical effects. This review is spoiler free.
There are a lot of horror movies out there that have excessive exploitation of women's bodies, sexual content, and excessive gore. The gore doesn't bother me, it's the unnecessary nudity. So when I find a movie that has mainly female cast and doesn’t exploit their bodies, I am here for it. I just read an interesting blog post about nudity in films and why it's being used.
Nudity isn’t my thing, its just not a necessity for me. I don't need that to be there to enjoy a movie you can and infer things, you don't have to show it all. I get that when writing a script that a victim needs a reason to be alone, vulnerable, and easier to kill. You don't need them to be naked. There are other ways to do it. And actually this movie does it well. You can watch this with your older children and not have any awkward moments where you're like, “Oh my God! Did I let my kid watch this? What is wrong with me?”
The movie is one hour and 33 minutes, I do think that is the main issue with the movie. It is too long. This movie is about a killer sloth, and you can only go so far with that. To you enjoy something like this you obviously need to have a suspension of disbelief and for that to be possible you have to have a little of realism to keep going. If people disappear, notice it sooner. I can suspend disbelief and think that there is really a killer sloth, but I have a hard time believing that you didn't notice your friend went missing.
That said, without giving away, let me just say that Alpha kills people pretty early on. You would think this would be something people would notice, but nope. That's what I get hung up on because most people would notice people disappearing. It took too long for anyone to notice that some people have gone missing.
It is really hard to give a review without giving away spoilers, even minor ones. With that said, I think that if they have made a few tweaks especially into the sequence of events that the movie would've made more sense. I know I am nitpicking here, but I felt like they had dragged out the movie. The movie wasn't too long, it's just that it could've been a little shorter and I think it would've made it a little more enjoyable.
For the most part, the acting is decent. There are a few performances that could've been a better or not so cliché. It's almost like you're watching some strange movie like a mashup of the House Bunny, Bob Clark’s version of Black Christmas, and Munchies, with a touch of the campiness of Killer Klowns.
I really can't stand it when people pan a movie like this. That's why this movie is the way it is. You cannot make a serious movie about a killer sloth named Alpha who is fantastic at using social media and can get away with bloody murder because she's adorable.
Bradly Fowler, the co-writer, even said that he came up with the dumbest idea imaginable. Movie plots this cheesy are necessary. Movies like Slotherhouse are an easy watch. It doesn't need to make sense. You can laugh at the ridiculousness of it and you don't have to think.
I also love the fact that they used practical effects, and they didn't use a real sloth in this movie. That's another reason I love it so much. Apparently, PETA loved that too. Slotherhouse may seem like a dumb, unrealistic movie with no point to it and it has an underlying message that's important.
This is a movie that is fun and cute. It takes inspiration from other horror movies and is a funny, campy movie that over the years will gather a cult following. Seriously, Alpha is a deceptively adorable villain you can root for.
I give this 7 out of 10 stars. I've seen big budget horror movies from Hollywood studios that sucked. The creators of Slotherhouse did something that was special and well done with a small budget. How can you not like that?