Slither (2006)

There's a great moment in Slither, the B-grade horror/comedy, when the hero, Officer Bill Pardy (Nathan Fillion), is being choked in his office by a rampaging zombie deer. It sounds very funny (and it is!), but it's also a nail-biting moment of suspense. Such is the genius of this film.

As we've noted before, we've recently been inundated with the horror genre here at the PPCC - from the drawling bore of Underworld: Rise of the Lycans to the camp classic that is Ghostbusters. Simon Pegg's endearing Shaun of the Dead was our favorite-so-far, but it's been ousted today by the far funnier, far grosser Slither. Whereas Shaun of the Dead relied much on the charm of Simon Pegg as our favorite nerd-with-a-heart-of-gold (and he is, yes, so cute!), Slither is much more concerned with being the most disgusting, most absurd and hilariously presented B-film we've seen in a long time. And it succeeds.


Very poor insulation.

Somewhere from the deepest, darkest reaches of outer space, a meteor crashes into a poor, forgotten, Confederate flag-waving town in the American South. This town doesn't have that false sense of mummified 1950s Americana as in Waitress, rather it resembles the poor white realities of trailers, chain fast food and trucker hats (so, more like The Wrestler). Anyway, the meteor. So Grant Grant (Michael Rooker) and his wife, Starla Grant (Elizabeth Banks), have a minor disagreement one evening - while the hunky policeman, Bill, looks on (he's been pining for Starla since forever). During Grant's walk in the woods to cool off and get some air, he discovers the meteor - and is promptly attacked by a small worm-like parasite that squirms out of the smoldering space ash and into his diaphragm before clamping onto his brainstem.

Now possessed by the alien slug, Grant begins to sprout slimy tentacles, weird rashes and an insatiable hunger for MEEEAT. MEEEEEEEAAAT. After kidnapping and sucking the life force out of a local girl, as well as being spotted by Bill and his police posse, he is dubbed the "squid" and tracked by the terrified, bumbling townspeople. Lots of really inventive gross stuff then happens.


Beautiful boy!


Like a demented episode of House.

Has anyone in the PPCC readership seen David Cronenberg's The Fly? There's an iconic scene in it when the twitching, crusty, fly-man anti-hero, played by Jeff Goldblum, vomits on his food before eating it. It's all part of fly digestion! he says, while his girlfriend (and the PPCC, and the whole audience) looks on in gaping horror. Well, if you found that scene disgusting, but sort of... hilarious, and you kinda wanted to watch it again just so you could laugh at it, then Slither is for you. DO NOT watch it with any beverages around (as you will spit them) nor any food (as you will probably throw it back up) - the film is a strong mixture of the nauseating coupled with the very funny.

In fact, we spent so much of the film laughing and swallowing back our lunch, that we didn't realize how insidiously scary it also is - indeed, it's a testament to the quality of the filmmaking, which juggles moods deftly. There's the scene where we first see the alien slugs in all their squirming, multitudinous horror - the characters are screaming, the violins are shrieking, and something touched our thigh. PPCC readership, we tell you now that we jumped so high we nearly slammed against the ceiling. So, yes, it is also a fairly scary film.

But it is also a lot of fun, if watched responsibly. Where by "responsibly", we mean: with company, in full sunlight, without any food or beverages or children around. Enjoy!

Waitress (2007)

Halfway during the film Waitress, when the reluctantly pregnant heroine, Jenna (Keri Russell), experiences an existential reinvigoration thanks to her affair with the sexy new doctor in town, Dr. Pomatter (Nathan Fillion), a song by the band Cake plays.

For those who don't know Cake, it's a perfect choice. Not only does this film concern, well, pie-making, but it also exhibits that same sardonic delivery and dry wit, that same blunt deadpan style that Cake is so fond of. This is a film where one character says monotonously, "Maybe I'm not such a bad guy after all." And the other character replies, without inflection, "Maybe you're not such a bad guy after all." At first, the dialogue sounds awkward, the acting stilted: they're like robot people reciting things. And the semi-mythical Small Southern Town feels false. But gradually you warm to it, and the same sense of low-key, smirking humor seeps into you like... well, like when you listen to Cake.

Somewhere in a Small Southern Town, caught sometime in the 1950s, the local pie diner's favorite waitress, Jenna, discovers she's pregnant. This is probably the worst news she could get, as she was planning to flee her abusive, narcissistic husband, Earl (Jeremy Sisto), right after winning big at the upcoming Pie Contest. Jenna is unapologetically grumpy about this news, and even instructs her new Yankee gynecologist, Dr. Pomatter, not to make a big deal about. "Un-congratulations," he supplies.

During their regular visits, Jenna becomes increasingly bemused with Pomatter, who is bumbling, perpetually nervous and very adorable. He is also, unfortunately, very married, but this doesn't stop the two of them from unexpectedly assaulting each other in one of the film's best sequences. Carpe diem indeed!

Meanwhile, the other waitresses (Adrienne Shelly, who also wrote the screenplay, and Cheryl Hines) are having their own romantic tangles, Andy Griffith (like, the real Andy Griffith) drops by to play the curmudgeonly diner owner, Earl the Evil keeps getting worse and Jenna concocts a series of wonderfully appropriate new recipes. Our favorite being Pregnant Miserable Self Pitying Loser Pie: "Lumpy oatmeal with fruitcake mashed in. Flambé, of course."


Pie.


Giving the pie.


Beautiful boy.


Happy forever!

This film is a fairy tale that flirts dangerously along the border between an an age before Betty Friedan and a sort of uber-ironic post-post-feminism. Thankfully (?) it's pretty light fare, and doesn't aspire to any great revelations about the second sex. Though there is a lot of freshness in that adultery isn't demonized, nor is being less-than-enthusiastic about the fruit of your loins. The cinematography is very geometrical, with angular profiles and neatly aligned pie-making supplies. (This is all lovingly messed up with the arrival of Pomatter and his very doctorly disorganization and adorably confused hair. But I digress.) Things never get as self-consciously ironic or aesthetically stylized as a Wes Anderson film, and we, at least, were grateful for that. As Andy Griffith describes the perfect pie in one scene, there's a bittersweet chocolate middle followed by a familiar strawberry sweet ending.

Keri Russell makes the perfect heroine here, with her baby doll features and icy cynicism. You sense a great mix between sass, sympathy and (despite the earlier pie) rarified self-pity. Cheryl Hines and Adrienne Shelly provide great foils as the stereotypical gang o' girlfriends from the diner. Jeremy Sisto does an admirable job in his thankless role, investing in Earl such childlike vulnerability that we felt a sort of retrograde sympathy for him when we weren't feeling nauseous. And Nathan Fillion! Ah, one in a million, Nathan Fillion. Rediscovering Nathan Fillion was like rediscovering Spiritualized - or maybe we just make that comparison because both happened today. But anyway, we forgot just how much we like Fillion (and Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space) and how it's a gosh darn, twitchy, Han Solo-ey shame that Firefly got cancelled and Serenity was only two hours instead of, like, sixteen. Man! He was like the perfect pie, and just as cute.