Slotherhouse came out this year in a time of silly animal horror that wants to sell you on titles like Cocaine Bear or Winnie the Pooh Blood and honey. But does Slotherhouse manage to live to the highs of Cocaine Bear or will it, too, fall to the lows of Winnie the Pooh Blood and Honey?
Slotherhouse has two different stories one being the slasher sloth going through their victims, the other is the mean girls inspired story of a college student trying to be the leader at their sorority.
Slotherhouse is pretty mediocre for the first half, the Mean Girls inspired story has one-dimensional characters that don’t really go past the stereotypical rich girl and the movie has this theme of social media is bad, which is a pretty flat theme that doesn’t add much to the conversation.
The best scene in the beginning of Slotherhouse is the Sloth’s first two kills. They have this slow buildup to the kills reminiscent of Friday the 13th or Hallween even having blood splatter on the camera. Also the soundtrack turns to a horror ambience that is reminiscent of 80s slashers. But these scenes are short lived and the Mean Girls story continues. This leads on to the next problem of the movie, the sloth kills too many people too fast. No buildup, no horror or comedy, just a Montage of deaths. The next two deaths are better since they have the buildup but they cut out before the deaths so the buildup doesn’t lead to anything.
The movie does use practical effects for the sloth and blood. The sloth is a puppet but they managed to give the sloth these exaggerated expressions. This comes down to a matter of personal preference but the sloth being a puppet isn’t a negative thing especially since the film team managed to give the sloth expressive expressions. The movie isn’t realistic (for a movie about a killer sloth), characters will seemingly teleport across miles. Nobody notices that half of the sorority is gone. But these plot holes are played off as subtle jokes. The kills, when they do happen, have this really brutal, flesh-crunching sound effect. In the latter half of the movie, the main character learns a lesson in not letting popularity get to you. This theme is actually explored unlike the theme of social media is bad and it makes following the story more tolerable.
The main problem of Slotherhouse is that it doesn’t strike a nice balance between the Mean Girl scenes and the horror scenes. If the horror aspect of the movie was brought out more and given more time, we would have a great movie. But the saving grace of the movie was the latter half, where the horror and themes of the movie are given more time to be built upon and explored.
