10 Monster Movies That Totally Screw With Your Brain

The directorial debut of James Gunn (more famous these days for bringing the Guardians Of The Galaxy to life on the big screen, and making my childhood hero Rocket Raccoon a household name), Slither is a sci-fi comic horror that succeeds on every level that that description suggests.

The monster in this instance is an alien parasite, a sentient infection that hooks into Michael Rooker’s wealthy car dealer Grant Grant, slowly transforming him into the kind of tentacled, slug-like horror that haunts the cheese-dreams of mankind.

Infecting (and horribly inflating) a local woman with scores of his larval offspring, the parasite/Grant succeeds in birthing his young in explosive fashion, sending more parasites across the sleepy South Carolina town of Wheelsy. It’s left to police chief Bill Pardy (a cheerfully magnetic Nathan Fillion) and his childhood sweetheart Starla to fight this grotesque alien invasion before it spreads to become a nationwide - a global - epidemic.

Slither is a showcase for more than just some great, gruesome special effects and Fillion’s brand of self-deprecating charisma: it’s an irreverent homage to Cronenberg’s seminal early work, specifically The Brood and Shivers, which dealt with the deep-seated fear of permanent change, painful growth and the inevitability of aging and mortality via the mutation/infection metaphors of body horror.

It’s also bloody hilarious, and hilariously bloody, and although it didn’t make back its budget, it established Gunn as a filmmaker to watch and so indirectly lead to me being able to purchase a Rocket Raccoon Funko bobblehead for my desk at home. Sweet.