Slither is an amazing film. If you didn’t see it earlier, you can watch my review of it here. It’s fun, funny, scary and overall just under 2 hours of total fun! The critics loved it (It’s got an 84% on Rotten Tomatoes right now), those who saw it loved it (Holding a 93% for viewer approval) and damn it I Love it!
So why didn’t anyone go to see it?!?!?! It only made $3.8 million on its opening weekend!!!!
This is the second fantastic film in a row for Nathan Fillion that has totally fallen flat at the box office. Serenity was a wonderful film, Slither is even better… any actor would cut off his left nut to be in projects this good. Fillion has had both… and yet both bomb.
It’s not Nathan’s fault. Fillion is a great on screen (although I do need to see him give a little more range before I’ll crown him a a “Great Actor” since his characters in both film essentially acted the exact same way).
It’s not the studios fault really. They produced a great product… and the marketed the hell out of it (I thought the ad campaign for Slither was wonderful).
The blame doesn’t lay with Ice Age 2 (Garbage movie). Yes it took almost all the box office money that weekend with over $70 million… but that was 99% parents with kids who couldn’t get in to see Slither anyway. Not to mention Slither came in 8th place… not second.
The good folks over at Cinematical sum up why Slither failed at the box office (even though they also loved the film). I think they’re bang on the money.
The movie has a handful of familiar faces, but none you can bank on at the box office. The premise sounds silly when it rolls out of your mouth, which makes it hard for you to answer “what’s it about?” when you say “Hey, let’s see Slither!” The hardcore horror fans want less comedy. Those looking for a funny flick generally avoid movies characterized as “gory.” Plus, and this is something that really hurt the flick, it’s not about teenagers. The only reason that Stay Alive made money and Slither did not is because one is PG-13, banal, and laden with teenagers, while the other is R-rated, actively bizarre, and filled with very good actors who share the collective misfortune of being older than, say, 17.
The sad thing is, because we (the movie going public) don’t suport fantastic films like this one, we run the risk that the studios won’t takes risks on them anymore, and instead give us more crap like “Stay Alive” and “Ice Age 2”. Non-R-rated films with less gore, and less fun.
Here on The Movie Blog, commenters often yell out (and I do too) “Oh they better make “such and such” movie rated R or else it will suck!” Ok, fair enough… but why should the studios listen when we fail to reward them for obeying us? Slither is a perfect example of this.
Slither is the kind of movie a lot of us keep asking for… and how do we reward the studio for listening to us and giving us what we want? We stay away. And fans wonder why studios don’t listen to us more often. Its a sad day.
