Rating: 3/5
Two teens sit in a rowboat. The boyfriend is grumpy and fishing, while the girlfriend is bored AF. So, she decides to strip down and swim in the lake despite seeing sewage dumped into it. But just before she takes off her top, the boyfriend feels something slimy on his bare feet, and something pulls him into the lake.
By the way, even though the girlfriend calls him Wayne, he’s credited as Boy in Boat. I wish my one IMDb credit were “Girl in Boat.” Where was I? Oh, right. Boy comes up as a rush of pulpy blood, triggering the S-tier credits sequence. It’s slugs but inverted and blue. Random screams are thrown into the score because the filmmakers aren’t sure if they are conveying how scary this movie will otherwise be.
SLUGS
When the credits end, we see Ron Bell, drunk as a skunk, walking in the street at night. A car full of teens harasses him as they pass, sending him to the ground. Ron Bell eats the fuck out of the scenery when his dog sidles over and helps him up. His dog squeals as he nips the bottle in his jacket. His one beloved dog becomes his mortal enemy as it keeps squealing, making Ron angry. He sits on the couch, and I guess his house has a bunch of slugs. So the slugs eat him.
SLUGS
Mike Brady and his wife, Kim, are on a double date with Maureen and her husband, David. Maureen wants to dance, but everyone else is far too straight and white to pretend they can dance. So Mike and Kim leave, only to run into Don Palmer and his wife, Maria. Don’s the county sanitation supervisor. Don tries to get Mike to stay for a drink, but Mike’s gotta get home for his early meeting with the sheriff tomorrow, where they go by Ron Bell’s house and evict Ron Bell.
That night, Kim puts on black lingerie and asks Mike if he finds Maureen attractive. Because Kim is a teacher, Mike uses the epic pickup line, “Say, teacher, what do you say we start our homework?” Just those words send Maureen into orgasmic bliss. Meanwhile, slugs crawl on their window.
SLUGS
Thankfully, the movie fulfills the promise of letting us see Mike drive to the sheriff’s office to meet up with the sheriff and head over to Ron Bell’s house to evict him. An officer receives a call from his wife, and the officer laughs at his wife, saying he won’t come home to kill a couple of snails. His wife corrects him. He says, “Snails? Slugs? What’s the difference?”
SLUGS
Mike and the sheriff jump into the car. Brady tries to light a cigarette — what a rebel—and the sheriff stops Mike from messing up his lungs. Oh my god, finally, they got to Ron Bell’s house. Funny, he isn’t answering his door. Notorious town drunk we’re about to evict Ron Bell always answers his door! Could it be the slugs we saw 10 minutes ago? They find Bell’s skeleton, covered in viscera and crawling with slugs.
SLUGS
Mike has to go back in and see what’s up. Which I guess means pointing his flashlight at a shit-stained toilet for at least 15 seconds. After that, however, we see the streaks of goo running down the hallway in formation. Some zig-zag. Some terminate, suggesting the slug evaporated mid-stride. Mike follows the trail down to the basement. His first horror is the amount of trash Ron kept down there. You could breed slugs in that sort of compost!
SLUGS
Mike tells the sheriff he thinks rats killed Ron. The sheriff rightfully treats Mike like an idiot. Because it ain’t rats, Mike, It’s
SLUGS</i>.
Actually it’s BIG SLUGS, but the movie doesn’t establish that until 25 minutes and three deaths later.
This movie is so fucking good. Every choice is inspired. I didn’t mean to summarize it in that much detail. Don’t worry. That’s just the first ten minutes of this movie. I had to stop myself from pausing and writing another paragraph.
It is based on the novel Slugs by Shaun Hutson. Weirdly, the book is about a baseball player who gets recruited into the army, so Slugs takes on a double meaning: the hits he makes while playing baseball and the falling bullets as he shoots his fellow man in the name of freedom. It reflects on the morality of war vs. the price of liberty.
Actually, that’s not true; they are the same slugs as in this movie.
If there’s a double meaning anywhere, it’s in the film’s no-so-covert condemnation of drinking. Our hero evades it with wuxia-like dexterity TWICE at the bar with friends. The two known alcoholics in the movie are marked for death: Ron Bell, immediately, and Maureen Watson. One of the teens, who looks at least thirty-five, stops initiating sex with his girlfriend to drink Captain Morgan. It makes their behavior sluggish, so the slugs consume them. It also punishes those who are reticent to do chores—might as well be a drunk, as useless as you are to the economy.
Mike has uglier Ted Danson energy. I’m not saying Ted Danson is ugly; you could mash your fingers into his face like Play-Doh and get this guy’s face.
The gore effects, while cheap, are copious.
The strength of these slugs! I didn’t realize they could combine their strength and pull an adult human around.
The film understands the inherent eroticism of slugs. I need to rewatch Pieces—I think I misunderstood it the first time.
** Stray Thoughts / Spoilers **
- Mike watches two teens make out. It’s so weird.
- Halloween party!
- There are so many characters! We will meet everyone who dies at least one scene before they die!
- The dubbing for the Spanish actors is weird.
- Living lettuce! Wait, no, slugs!
- They are very committed to this alcoholic Maureen subplot.
- We went from a guy cutting his hand off because he can’t remove a glove full of slugs to his entire house blowing up in seconds.
- The slug BITES Mike!
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Uh oh, Maureen drank, and now she doesn’t have dinner ready for David. : - “I was kind of hoping for some WILD hors d’ouvres.”
- Maureen fed David slug!
- Did he just cut a real slug in half? :(
- Every time we establish a scene with slugs, it’s never a couple to get it started; it’s always, “The room is absolutely filled with them, and you’d have to be blind to miss them.”
- Crying during sex while Bobby stops to drink more alcohol
- Wait, Mike hasn’t put together that slugs killed Ron Bell yet??
- “Killer slugs? For Christ’s sake, what’ll it be next? Demented crickets? Rampaging mosquitoes, maybe?”
- David doesn’t die until the second he sips alcohol. NOT when he ate the slugs??
- Mike believes in the killer slugs but doesn’t believe Don when he says something is eating animals.
- Okay, 50 minutes in, they finally figure out that it is slugs.
- It turns out that bureaucracy is the biggest enemy. You can’t declare a state of emergency without the proper paperwork!
- “I sure hope things like that don’t happen around here AGAIN!” she says before it happens again.
- Oh yeah, the Halloween party!
- “I tell you what, when I get back, how about if we get naked and get crazy?” Don’s such a romantic.
- Bro, I thought we were gonna get a whole Halloween party eaten by slugs :(
- Don offered his wife to “get naked and get crazy,” which is the classic cue that he’s going to die.
- ONE SLUG LIVES.