“What the fuck was that?” Nathan Fillion asked the same question I did while watching Slither. When trying to figure out what to end my creepy crawly coverage with, I was between this and The Nest. Slither is a film many people love and talk highly about, but I had never seen it. James Gunn has mainly been a miss for me, and as someone who can’t stand his superhero films (except you, Peacemaker, I love you), I was hesitant to watch this. From humble beginnings with Troma to being a Hollywood elite, James Gunn has had a career to be envied by freshmen in film schools all across the earth. What’s become clear through Gunn’s work, and most filmmakers when they ‘make it’, is that the craft of filmmaking becomes more about money than the love of the craft. This is not to sound bitter because I live paycheck to sperm donation, but it feels like he’s lost sight of why he got into filmmaking in the first place.

Slither is an odd beast and is the second to last film of Gunn’s I’ve enjoyed. (I’m using the term enjoyed loosely.) While billed as a goopy homage to films like Night of the Creeps, Society, and Shivers, Slither takes the best parts of these films and fills in the holes with incredibly cheesy and [somewhat] enjoyable dialogue. The film starts oddly when we see the town’s mayor making his way through town. We’re made to believe that the downtown area of this small town is crawling with degenerates and unhoused people, but then nothing ever comes of this again. My first written note for Slither is literally, “WTF is this town?” Gunn starts this world-building for the town and immediately forgets he even brought it up. It feels cheap and purposeless. 

This film is definitely a horror comedy, but whether or not the comedy works is unquestionably case by case. Most of the humor fell flat for me, leaving my enjoyment of Slither to the practical effects and the story. Now, there are some unfortunate digital ‘enhancements’ that make some of the shots of the creature look pretty laughable (and not in the way he intended). The practicals we DO get are brutally fantastic. One would expect an homage of 80s horror comedies to be strictly practical. But maybe that’s just me. 

Gunn’s cast does a lot of the film’s heavy lifting and finds ways to make his sloppily written dialogue palatable. “Should you be asking this many questions close to your birthday?” Even Michael Rooker has difficulty making that line sound good. Slither hinges on the final reveal of the creature in the third act, and the reveal is worth the wait…even if it feels like less of an homage to Society and more of intellectual property theft. If you want a decently fun creature feature that you can watch on a Friday night with some friends, a 12-pack, and a Domino’s emergency pizza, then Slither would be a good one to throw on the queue.

If you’ve listened to a single episode of HPTV, you’re probably aware of my love of Art Bell and [fun] conspiracies. (Once you’re loading up a posse to storm a pizza parlor, you’ve lost me.) Bug is talked about frequently in conspiracy threads all across the interwebs, though in ways that are less fun and more of a get-your-gun-and-storm-a-pizza-parlor way. This marred the film for me, but I thought it would be a great film to cover for our creepy crawlies month. Another red X this film has going for it is something wholly personal and makes me a bit biased. If I had a nickel for every time I’ve watched an edgy theater kid in college (throughout four years of theater classes) do a scene or monologue from this film, I’d have like 20 nickels.

JUST BECAUSE YOU ARE LOUD AND DO ERRATIC MOVEMENTS DOESN’T MEAN YOU’RE ACTING.

Bug tells a harrowing tale of the perils of mental health and conspiracy. Agnes (Ashley Judd) finds herself living in a rundown motel and constantly in fear of her incarcerated former partner, Jerry (Harry Connick Jr.). Things start to look up for Agnes when R.C. (Lynn Collins) introduces the mysterious but initially charming Peter Evans (Michael Shannon) into her life. Bug takes a sharp turn when Peter starts to share a theory that some government entity experimented on him during the war, which makes Peter go AWOL. What experiment did the government do to him? They filled him with…bugs!

Biases aside, Bug is one of the few films where I’m having trouble forming my opinion. To date, there has never been a film I both loved and disliked equally. Bug would mark the first collaboration between director William Friedkin and writer Tracy Letts, based on a play of the same name from writer Tracy Letts. This film walks the line between conspiracy and mental health. It stays fairly ambiguous throughout the entire runtime but eventually gives us a solid answer about one of the ambiguous ideas raised, and it feels incredibly cheap. If you spend considerable time leading the audience one way and then reversing that decision at the last moment with zero evidence to point that way, well, it’s careless. 

Two positive elements of this film work to save it from the depths of a pizza parlor’s sordid basement. Firstly, the film’s descent into madness. Secondly, the performances of Ashley Judd, Michael Shannon, and Lynn Collins (though it’s mainly Judd and Shannon). The characters are written in a way to foil each other perfectly, and the overwhelming majority of this film hinges upon the idea of social isolation so we are stuck with our characters in one location for 98% of the film. Judd and Shannon play off each other masterfully, and by the film’s final act, you cannot take your eyes off the screen. But again, the final act is ruined by Letts and Friedkin giving a solidified answer to questions that have been relatively ambiguous throughout the film. Shannon’s performance is most likely bolstered and fully realized by the fact that he played Peter Evans in the original, and subsequent stage performances of Bug. 

Finally, the last aspect of this film is something that could go either way for audiences; this mainly worked for me but it’s easy to see how this could be a detractor for some audiences—the dialogue. Friedkin tries hard to make the film feel like a stage play. The dialogue is written and performed as if you were watching a stage play. Conversations overlap in a way that feels very community theater-like. Film typically doesn’t have constant overlapping dialogue, so if that’s something you’re not a fan of, then you’ll have a tough time making it all the way through. 

Bug is a film that I think I’d possibly revisit with some other conspiracy friends, but that’s probably the only time I’d ever watch it again. Judd and Shannon give a masterclass in performing, it’s just ruined by one bad story decision. I’d be interested to see/read the original play to see where the film and the stage play share similarities and differences.