Slaughterhouse Rulez

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This one comes to me as not so much a high recommendation as a title in which Simon Pegg and Nick Frost coexist. I am a fan, especially when they team up with Edgar Wright, but that is not the case here. Still, I did check out the trailer, and to me, it looked like a fun time, if nothing else. Much like I appreciate in so many other films, it seemed to be a bit of a horror flick with plenty of comedy, and looked as though it would be right up my alley. However, sadly, sometimes things don't turn out quite how we would like.

Following the tragic death of his father, Donald Wallace (Finn Cole) enrolls in an exclusive school known as Slaughterhouse. There, he attempts to fit in among his peers, meeting (among others) the odd but friendly roommate, Willoughby Blake (Asa Butterfield), a hardened prefect named Clegg (Tom Rhys Harries), Head of their Sparta House, Meredith Houseman (Simon Pegg) and the school's Headmaster, they call "The Bat" (Michael Sheen). The school is home to a fair share of secrets, one of which involves the Headmaster's scheme of fracking ("the process of injecting liquid at high pressure into subterranean rocks, boreholes, etc. so as to force open existing fissures and extract oil or gas"),

Despite warnings from the local harbinger, Woody Chapman (Nick Frost), the fracking continues to the point where it eventually creates a sinkhole, unleashing horrible subterranean half-worm, half-dog creatures with an appetite for human flesh. Unfortunately, to get to this point takes a good long while, and the film really doesn't do anything special until that point. A lot of it is getting to know the characters, but no one really sticks out to me here; not even Pegg or Frost. Meredith spends his time pining for his far away girlfriend, Audrey (Margot Robbie) and Woody is just plain off his rocker, and not in the typically charming Nick Frost way so much as being all drugged up and serious.

While it was easy enough to tell not to take a film like this seriously, I can't say I had as much fun as I wish I did. On paper, this sounds great - it's almost like 'Harry Potter' meets 'Attack the Block', except there's no magic and the aliens come from the underground. I can't deny that the gross-out creature effects were good and effective, utilizing a lot of practical over CG, but again, it just takes too long for anything to really happen. For almost the first hour, it's exposition and a sinkhole and then we finally get into the action. 'Attack the Block' is very similar in some ways, but it hits the ground running and you don't stop running until it's over. This was more like waiting for the timer to go off, and nothing particularly special happens in that time. I think this could have been a lot of fun, if it was only cut down a bit.

I'm not sure I'd say the film was bad, exactly, but I would suggest that it's pretty forgettable, and that there are other films like it that are much better. As a British creature feature, I would still highly recommend 'Attack the Block' over this any day. This isn't something I feel like I need to go back and watch again, or show off to my friends, and there are several other better Pegg/Frost movies out there much more worth your time. However, if you don't mind waiting for the horror aspect of this to pop up, it does get fun within the last half of it regardless of how you might feel about the first half. It could be a fun thing to throw on absent-mindedly, but nothing very special. It's readily available on Netflix (Canada) if you want to check it out for yourself.

2/5

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