Rush Week

It is no secret that I like horror films. I’ve said it repeatedly on the podcast, but you could easily just look at the kinds of content I cover and notice a lot of scary movies in and among the superhero, sci-fi, and action works that keep this site running. Monster movies are great, slasher films are even better, and when you can combine the two into something more interesting, or at least more amusing, then that’s even better. Anything that can bring thrills and scares is absolutely something I want to see.

That’s what initially drew me to Slotherhouse, a joking slasher flick about sorority sisters getting wiped out by an angry sloth. It’s a dumb concept, no doubt, but sometimes dumb concepts can lead to enjoyable films. On its face the idea of a possessed doll killing people sounds stupid, but the Child’s Play franchise has been running strong for seven films, a remake, and a TV series, so why not a film about an evil sloth? It’s not the dumbest idea I’ve heard of and, in the right hands, it could actually make for a good, late night splatter fest.

Unfortunately director Matthew Goodhue and writer Bradley Fowler were not the right hands to take on this task. While the film starts off well, and has a number of interesting ideas it pursues, it hits a point where you can tell the creative team ran out of ideas for what they could do with a killer sloth. From that point forward the film falls into self-parody, spinning itself so far out from its original concept that it becomes nearly unwatchable. It’s a fun film with an amusing premise that ruins itself completely halfway in, and you have to think it didn’t need to be this way.

Emily (Lisa Ambalavanar) is a sorority sister with dreams of being popular, famous, and queen of the house. It’s a pipe dream, she thinks, and her friend Madison (Olivia Rouyre), can’t really disagree. The house is ruled by queen bee Brianna (Sydney Craven), the most popular bitch on campus, who is looking to go for an unprecedented fourth year as sorority queen. If Emily wants to take the crown, she’d have to run against Brianna in the election, and the only way she’d be able to pull that off is if she has something that could give her a real edge.

Enter Oliver (Stefan Kapičić), a poacher and trafficker of illegal animals. Emily meets Oliver at the mall one day and he mentions that if she wants something cute and fuzzy, he has a sweet little sloth she could buy. Initially hesitant, she eventually agrees, going over to his house to get the sloth. Oliver, though, has already been killed by the sloth, who actually has evil in its heart, but when Emily sees the sloth it seems docile and nice. She grabs it, and its meds, and goes back to the sorority house. Her sisters, though, see the sloth and all fall in love with it, and this immediately boosts Emily’s popularity. She gets the fame and adoration she wants because of the animal, even while Madison keeps telling her it’s a wild animal that needs to be taken back to its own habitat. And, of course, Madison’s right because once the sloth turns bad, no one is safe in the slotherhouse.

There is no denying that Slotherhouse is a silly film. Sloths might be many things, and maybe even in the right circumstance they could be dangerous, but you’re never going to find a real setting where a bunch of people get killed by a single sloth, no matter how murderous they might feel. They’re just not that kind of creature, no matter what the film might make itself out to be. The one realistic death (such as it is) is when the sloth, being held by the poacher, kills the poacher. That’s the kind of danger we can expect from a sloth.

To make up for that, the film lets the dread of what the sloth could do hang over the film. It gives us that early kill so that we know the sloth could spell trouble, but then we see it bond with Emily as she treats it well, giving it what it needs along with love and attention. We can tell everything rides on a thin line and we have to wait for what happens to turn a good sloth bad. It’s a funny concept that can mind some real tension, and I’m impressed the film is able to do all this with, frankly, a fairly silly sloth puppet.

While the tension builds the film gets us invested in the political drama of the sorority. There’s a lot of development that goes into the race between Emily and Brianna, and it’s pretty clear the film wants us to buy into this storyline, to care about what happens to Emily. Her goal is to win and even though she has an illegal animal that she’s turned into the house mascot, she doesn’t seem like a bad person. We can expect that as she rises in popularity, the evil sloth will eventually make her pay for her hubris. That would be the goal of a story like this, anyway.

The issue comes around the halfway point, though, when the sloth actually turns evil. It’s not because Emily forgets to give the sloth its meds, which keep it calm and docile. No, instead she leaves to take care of something, and the sloth decides to browse the internet and look at her photos. Not a joke, this sloth, which is just a wild animal, figures out how to use a laptop, to control it via a mouse, and how to browse Instagram, all so it can see what Emily has been up to before. Once it sees a picture she posted with the man she met at the mall (the poacher) instantly the sloth turns evil. And, in the process, the film turns to trash.

My issue is this is just supposed to be a normal sloth. This isn’t Zootopia, where all the animals are sentient, intelligent beings. It’s just a sloth, and we’re given no explanation for how it can do the things it does. It’s not a mutant, or a genetically engineered creature, it’s just a sloth, so how can it learn to use a computer, learn how to use phones, get directions from an app, or even drive a car? Hell, the sloth figures out complex electrical hookups and the science of electricity and water all so it can pull off a shower kill. None of this makes sense.

Now I’m sure I’m just being too literal and we’re just supposed to buy into this because it’s dumb and silly. I can accept that if the film around it is also operating at a heightened, silly level. I don’t question what happens in a Child’s Play film because the world in those movies has been built up to a point where anything can happen. But the world of Slotherhouse, outside of its crazy intelligent killer sloth, is pretty grounded and realistic. The girls might be ditzy sorority sisters that spend all day caring about their house (and spend very little time caring about school) but that doesn’t seem that unrealistic. It’s just life in a sorority house. Into that reality, a car-driving sloth with mechanical engineering expertise feels very out of place. The reality of the girls needed to be heightened more or the sloth needed to be made more realistic.

I’m annoyed by this movie because, for a solid half of the film, I was actually really invested in the characters and their story. I was waiting for the moment for the sloth would snap and, very slowly (because it’s a sloth) kill everyone in the house one by one. That was what the film was building to with its story and the tension the sloth was bringing. And then the film throws it all away to get very silly and cartoonish. It’s an about-face that doesn’t work and it sucked me right out of the film.

Slotherhouse could have been great, one of those high-concept slasher films with a weirdo killer at the center. I know others online actually love this movie, and can understand why. If you can let go of expectations of a regulated reality, one that’s internally consistent, and can just laugh at the dumb crap happening on screen, then I guess you could like this movie. I didn’t, and the longer I watched it the more I realized the film just didn’t click for me. It was almost there, almost a film I could enjoy, and then it threw it all away when the sloth went online.

This proves it: social media ruins everything. Even Slotherhouse.