There’s always something interesting about seeing the directorial debut of a filmmaker whose work you are very familiar with, and who has carved out their own unique style that is extremely popular with audiences. James Gunn is a mainstay in blockbuster cinema nowadays, turning a D-list group of Marvel characters into a trilogy of fantastic superhero films, and crossing enemy territory to write and direct hands-down the best Superman movie in decades (yeah, I said it). But before any of that, he was quite a prolific screenwriter, the two live-action Scooby Doo films may have been slagged off a bit at the time, but since then have gained a massive cult following (I personally love the first one, not so much the second one). He also collaborated with the man who he would later inherit Batman and Superman from, penning the script for Zack Snyder’s directorial debut, the remake of Dawn of the Dead.
None of these films would lead you to believe that the man would go on to be such a big name, but they’re small fry compared to Slither, his first stab at directing a feature film. No-one would suspect that the origins of superhero cinema’s current MVP would lie in a gruesome and schlocky sci-fi comedy-horror where children are violently possessed by eel-like creatures and Michael Rooker makes a woman breed alien larvae until she blows up. Yet when watching it, it makes so much sense. I had a complete and utter blast with Slither.
James Gunn’s inspirations are as clear as day from the film’s opening scenes – a camera running through a forest at top speed should immediately call Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead to mind. After that though, the shot of a suspicious-looking meteorite is interrupted by a well-chosen needle drop, something we know Gunn loves so much, and immediately you’re flung into the world of a young and hungry James Gunn who is desperate to shock and entertain.
The film is full of his future collaborators: Michael Rooker, Nathan Fillion, and Gregg Henry all have prominent roles, and the score is composed by Tyler Bates. Watching this in 2026, it’s so fun to see Michael Rooker in a James Gunn movie where he isn’t lathered from head to toe in blue and shouting that he’s Mary Poppins but, compared to how he ends up here, the makeup and prosthetics departments on Guardians of the Galaxy were treating him kindly. Not only does he put in a deliciously evil performance, but there are some brilliant and outlandish prosthetics applied to him as his character begins to turn into a multi-tentacled mutated beast. His final form in particular is horrific, reminiscent of The Thing’s final form in John Carpenter’s seminal classic, but still human enough to be disturbing.
It’s a melting pot of ideas and inspirations that Gunn makes firmly his own.
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The descriptions I have rattled off so far sound utterly disgusting and, in the wrong hands, could come across as needlessly crass and tasteless. It still kind of is, but my word is it is good fun. The film leaves no stone unturned in displaying scenes of gruesome insanity, but what grounds it are the pitch-perfect performances from the cast. Taking this material completely seriously would be a mistake, but likewise treating it flippantly from start to finish could come across as unnecessarily cruel. Somehow the cast find a sweet spot behind the extremes, in particular Nathan Fillion and Elizabeth Banks. Fillion has some hilariously well-timed reaction shots and dry comments about the insanity he’s witnessing, but Banks’s performance is imbued with heartbreak and fear, as she watches her partner, played by Rooker, subsumed by a malevolent alien parasite. Slither finds glee in going this far, but the cast manage to rein it in just enough to work.
Slither has a small but still quite impressive budget of $15 million, a budget that Gunn gets a lot of mileage out of. The location filming looks great, perfectly capturing smalltown America despite being filmed in Canada, and most of the CG visuals hold up pretty well also – in a decade of cinema where the quality of computer generated effects varied wildly, this is closer to Davy Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean than it is to the Scorpion King.
It’s clear that, despite the stomach-churning visuals, a lot of genuine care and heart went into this. Even in his early directing career, Gunn was able to find this balance, an ability that would pay off in dividends when Guardians of the Galaxy so successfully combined snarky, nasty humour with potent emotional heft. Gunn puts in a lot of nods and winks to his influences (there’s a Rosemary Baby reference and the Mayor’s name contains two allusions to different Kurt Russell characters), but they don’t feel shoehorned in, rather carefully-placed, loving references to work that inspired him. There was a brief controversy at the time of release, with many fans of the cult classic Night of The Creeps deriding Slither for stealing its core elements, but whether it does or not doesn’t really matter. It’s a melting pot of ideas and inspirations that Gunn makes firmly his own.
Whether or not I would be able to stomach Slither on multiple occasions is an interesting question, as the sheer grossness of it is almost overwhelming at points. Nevertheless, I think I’ve found a new comedy-horror favourite here. Slither is a well-judged, well-crafted and lovingly made bit of pulp fun, and an incredibly assured feature length directorial debut from Gunn. The cast are committed to the bit, the splatter and horror action are wonderfully gross, and the film zips along at a rollicking pace for a damn good 95 minutes. His superhero work may be easier to sell (not to mention digest), but Slither is a worthy early addition to his now prolific catalogue of work.
Slither 4K is out now on Visions Home Video Blu-Ray
