Slotherhouse (Goodhue, 2023)

Slotherhouse is one of the funniest films I’ve seen recently despite its label as a horror and thriller film. It is centered around a senior college student, Emily, who is in a sorority. Social media is a huge factor in this movie and becomes one of the primary objectives for many individuals within it. The primary objective for Emily a bit further into the film is to become the president of her sorority, which she goes about in a very unique way by using a sloth she obtained. However, Emily doesn’t know that this sloth is more capable than other sloths, especially of murder. Emily decides to name the sloth Alpha and proposes to make her the sorority mascot to gain popularity in order to win votes against Brianna, the only other candidate running for the position of president. With this new opposition to Brianna, there is a change in many of the sorority sisters, and we get to see Emily’s closest sisters, Zenny (my favorite character due to her tomboyish personality), and Madison support her and give her advice. Unfortunately, Emily doesn’t always heed the advice she is given, which puts many people right in Alpha’s murderous path.

I would describe Slotherhouse as hilariously unpredictable, with its few references to other classic horror films such as The Shining (Kubrick, 1980), and its stereotypes regarding social media, Gen-Z, sorority life and culture, and spoof movies in general. Slotherhouse embraces these stereotypes in just the right way by taking matters surrounding these stereotypes very seriously. Although, I will admit that, as a woman who doesn’t understand the appeal of sororities or the color pink, the beginning of the film is, at times, irritating. However, I believe this isn’t necessarily a bad quality because the objective of any movie is to gain a reaction for an intended purpose, which goes back to the serious nature of those stereotypes present in this film. Not to mention, the movie itself is of good quality regarding camera work and shots, fitting music, and decent actors, disregarding the obviously fake sloth. I find the camera work to be pleasing because the shots are of good quality and they are paired well with fitting audio and music, and the shots themselves line up perfectly with one another, meaning there are good transitions between takes. By good quality, I mean that the camera work isn’t shaky and shots aren’t overexposed or underexposed, and the audio doesn’t change volume between shots or takes, or waver at any point during the movie. The camera and audio work is that of a well budgeted movie. The same can be said about the actors they chose, as they, in my opinion, delivered genuine and believable reactions throughout the movie. Many individuals make a connection with spoof movies being of cheaper quality, i.e. shaky camera or audio, and scenes or audio not lining up well or transitioning well, or with actors’ reactions not being believable, but I didn’t find this to be the case with Slotherhouse.

Slotherhouse, in my opinion, is a quite good and high-quality spoof movie. Not only is it funny in many different ways surrounding the characters and their reactions, but it has several surprising twists despite the length of the film. I absolutely plan on showing Slotherhouse to many individuals and rewatching it due to its ridiculous nature. I believe that this is a film for those who enjoy movies with the nature of horror movies but instead of revolving around horror concepts, such as gore, disturbing images, etc., it revolves around comedy. The producers achieved this by blending comedy with horror and created a type of movie that mocks horror movies, i.e. contains jumpscares, blood, scenes with struggle, violence, etc., which often is a characteristic of spoof movies. With that being said, I believe that those who aren’t horror fans might enjoy this film due to its silly nature making a mockery, not necessarily in a bad way, of generic horror movie characteristics. I find it to be a horror/thriller movie because it contains violence, the use of weapons, rough language, jumpscares, and many other qualities seen in horror/thriller movies, but I also consider it to be a comedy movie because it takes those themes and makes them funny and silly instead of making them serious. As mentioned earlier, Slotherhouse takes other stereotypes more seriously than those of horror movies, which shifts it to a more comedic movie type in my opinion. If you’re looking for a movie that needs zero true seriousness, this is a good choice as its serious points are there for comedic purposes. I’d recommend it to anyone who enjoys movies with wild or ridiculous plots and twists, and I’d definitely make this a sleepover movie among other spoof movies such as Scary Movie (Wayans, 2000) and Zombeavers (Rubin, 2014).

I believe that Slotherhouse is made well for a PG-13 movie because the gore shots, fight scenes, and language aren’t too extreme, however, certain horror/slasher fans, such as myself, might be disappointed in the lack of gore, nudity, violence, and harsh language. Although, the lack of these features might deter some more hardcore individuals, I think it can have the opposite affect for those who don’t enjoy as extreme of movies and they might want to focus more on a comedic experience within a movie such as Slotherhouse.

Slotherhouse can be viewed on a few streaming services such as Amazon Prime, Vudu, Apple TV, and YouTube.