By Simon Thompson
Matthew Goodhue’s Slotherhouse is certainly a movie made by a human being that exists. That is about the only piece of grudging acknowledgement I am willing to give this absolutely tortuous, cringe inducing eyesore of a film, which despite professing to be a horror-comedy fails to either scare me or make me laugh.
The plot of Slotherhouse follows Emily Young, a member of a sorority house in her senior year of college. Emily wants to become president of her sorority chapter, and decides that getting a cute animal is a fool-proof piece of good PR, so she adopts a three- toed sloth named Alpha to gain a big election boost over the rival candidate Brianna. To cut a long story short it turns out the cute little sloth isn’t exactly all that he seems and hijinks ensue.
The problem with Slotherhouse is that it’s trying to ape the style of so bad it’s good horror in the vein of movies such as Anaconda ,Snakes on a Plane, Deep Blue Sea and Birdemic- without the crucial ingredient all those pieces of schlocky fun have in common, sincerity. All those examples I just mentioned work because their directors believed they were making masterpieces, so they approached them with no irony whatsoever.
Matthew Goodhue and the two scriptwriters Bradley Fowler and Cady Lanigan on the other hand have actively set out to make something so bad that it’s good. What this results in is spinal- injury -painful overly self-aware dialogue, delivered by a cast of stock cliches ( the ‘wacky’ best friend, the bitchy sorority presidential candidate, the sensible brunette etc) that’s trying to ape classic teen comedies such as Heathers or Clueless without the charm and strong character writing of either.
From a horror standpoint however, the entire gimmick of Slotherhouse can basically be boiled down to, here’s this cute animal committing gruesome slasher movie style murders of college students- a joke which is repeated ad nauseum and doesn’t get any funnier as the narrative continues. To be fair to Slotherhouse however, its use of practical effects in some of the kills is a nice touch- something which if anybody has read any of my previous reviews knows that I greatly appreciate.
To conclude, Slotherhouse is a tedious, clichéd, and unfunny mess replete with a cast that is far too old to get away with playing college aged students credibly ( with Bianca Beckles Rose as ‘wacky’ best friend Zenny delivering one of the worst American accents I’ve ever heard), a gimmick which tires quickly, and a wafer-thin series of characters. To paraphrase Hans Moleman ‘ this movie has taken 1 hr and 33 mins of my life and I want them back.’
Bloody Flicks 