Horror Movie Review: Slotherhouse (2023)

Director’s Matthew Goodhue’s Slotherhouse has one joke, and that joke gets old surprisingly quick. A joke that makes up the entire film’s premise, which puts a killer sloth in a sorority house.

If you read that and thought – I need to see this film, absolutely no-one would blame you. It’s what happened here. A love-letter to old-school slasher-style horror, featuring practical effects, and no shortage of humour. It really could have been special.

The talented Lisa Ambalavanar plays Emily, a young woman who is desperate to become the head of her sorority. A task that seems impossible as the more popular Brianna (Sydney Craven) is pretty much guaranteed to win. Hoping to sway more votes to her cause, Emily ends up adopting an adorable three-toed sloth that she names Alpha, and every other sorority girl falls in love with it. This sky-rockets her popularity and her chances of winning massively increase.

Alpha is no normal sloth though, and sets about killing off the members of the sorority house, one by one.

Writers Bradley Fowler and Cady Lanigan’s attempt to turn this barebones premise into a 93-minute film inevitably falls short. Slotherhouse is as basic as they come, and runs out of steam way earlier than most would expect. A major component of this comes from the lack of any substantial sub-plots and a total lack of depth to any character. In a film this long, that is inexcusable.

What is also inexcusable is just how unlikable the lead character of Emily is. There’s no shade being thrown at Lisa Ambalavanar, she’s great, but her character is trash. Her selfish behaviour and lack of common sense is the reason why people die here. Right up to the end, she doesn’t take any responsibility, yet we’re all supposed to cheer on her learning that popularity isn’t the ‘be all and end all’.

Who cares though, right? It’s called Slotherhouse and Alpha is the star of the film, right?

That Alpha isn’t CGI is worthy of credit, and it being both cute and deadly makes it an easy creature to warm to. However, we come back to the same thing said at the start and that is, the joke gets old really quick. Not only that, while the body count is high, the deaths are wholly unmemorable. By the end, it’s all reached stages of silliness that start to make you feel stupid for watching it. Alpha drives a car, Alpha does selfies with his victims and posts them on its own social media account, Alpha can be everywhere at once, and so on.

It’s dumb, and while this is the point, it stops being entertainingly dumb. Had it been cut down to 70-minutes and had a better-written lead character, it might have been at least passable. Instead, we have this, and as stated at the start of this review, you’re either going to love it or hate it.