The magic of cinema is in its ability to take our world, in all its messy complexity, and reflect its core truth back to us. Cinema opens our eyes. It can teach us empathy, open our eyes to wider issues. It can change us. Or it can give us a film about a killer sloth with a samurai sword, which is honestly quite a lot better.
On paper, Slotherhouse (that’s right, it’s a pun on the word “slaughterhouse”, but with sloths) has The Asylum written all over it. It has the potential to be a cheaply made, lowest common denominator Sharknadoalike; a great title and an outrageous premise that, in reality, amounts to a stunt-cast non-actor emoting in a single location for an hour to fill the gap between the three VFX shots you already saw in the trailer. Even if you actively enjoy the idea of watching a sloth murder a bunch of people, Slotherhouse still won’t be something worth raising your expectations for.
Reader, raise your expectations. Slotherhouse is a masterpiece. The film is so good, so funny and so completely well-realised that it has received a stateside theatrical release. There’s no word on a UK release date yet, but it deserves to be seen on the biggest screen available.
Slotherhouse tells the story of Alpha, a dangerously psychotic sloth poached from the wilds of Panama to act as a sorority house mascot. At first things go wonderfully – Alpha even boosts the social media profile of the girl who takes care of her – but then things get dark quickly. How dark? Good question.
Want to see a sloth stab a woman to death? Watch Slotherhouse. Want to see a sloth deliberately electrocute a shower room full of college students? Watch Slotherhouse. Want to see a sloth embark upon the greatest onscreen massacre since Nat King Cole soundtracked a spate of prison stabbings in Breaking Bad? Watch Slotherhouse. Want to see a sloth take a selfie with one of its victims, and tag it, and put it on Instagram? You know what to do.
In a year full of surprisingly aggressive animal movies (Cocaine Bear, Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, the miserable unrelenting parade of vivisection that passed for the third Guardians of the Galaxy film), Slotherhouse deserves to stand on top of the pile. It isn’t just that it’s a film about a murderous sloth that tears around a building like an adorable Jason Voorhees, but that it’s been made with an unnecessary amount of affection for the genre it spoofs. There are subtle nods to Gremlins, The Shining, Fatal Attraction; nothing overt or showy, but just enough to let you know that Slotherhouse is an act of love.
It is also tremendously funny. Part of this, of course, is down to the sloth. Sloths, by their very nature, are not particularly well suited to acts of high-density murder, so to see one – a slightly shonky animatronic one at that – hack through scores of screaming college girls is a sight to behold. But the writing, acting and direction are all so much better than they need to be.
A lot of this is to do with its British talent. The lead is played by Lisa Ambalavanar, an actor who in a few short years has leapt from a recurring role in the British daytime soap Doctors to playing Jinx on Titans. The mean girl antagonist is Sydney Craven, who was Alexandra D’Costa on EastEnders for almost 50 episodes. Tiff Stevenson from People Just Do Nothing gets to make what might be the longest deathbed speech you will have ever heard. Which isn’t to say that this is an entirely British affair – Kelly Lynn Reiter, formerly of films as diverse as Clown Hotel 2 and It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Murder, also shines – but a distinctly national sensibility runs throughout. Think of it as the Paddington 2 of horror films.
Horror being what it is, there’s a small part of me that doesn’t want Slotherhouse to be a success, because I don’t want it to become the next Lake Placid. I don’t want this bold, muscular, knowing, original creature feature to be watered down with a succession of increasingly flaccid, low-budget sequels that trade all the gleeful mischief of the original for a conveyor belt of joyless titillation. But, while I fear that might ultimately be the film’s fate, we cannot let a film about a psychopathic unkillable sloth die on the vine. People need to see Slotherhouse. They need to see it in Barbie numbers.
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Slotherhouse is out in US cinemas now with a UK date to be announced
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Slotherhouse: is a horror film about a killer sloth secretly a masterpiece? - The Guardian
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