Slither

Slither (2006) starts with a meteorite falling near a small American town. What comes out of it enters a man's body and begins to spread from him: masses of flesh first, then worms, then half the town. The sheriff and the man's wife are left in the middle of it. It is James Gunn's first film as director. He had come from Troma and had written the Dawn of the Dead remake, and the mixture of disgust and joking here comes straight out of that school. Its clearest debts are to Night of the Creeps from 1986 and to early Cronenberg. The effects are largely practical: prosthetics, mechanical creatures and real fluid. Nathan Fillion plays the sheriff, Elizabeth Banks the wife and Michael Rooker the man who is taken over. Rooker and Gunn's collaboration begins here and ran through to Guardians of the Galaxy. It failed commercially, taking very little against a budget of around fifteen million dollars, and built its reputation afterwards. It runs 96 minutes. Good for: body horror comedy, practical effects, and early Gunn. Less good for: the disgusting parts are genuinely disgusting and the nauseating images come often. The move between comedy and horror reads as indecisive to some. Most of the characters are small town types.