Horror Movie Review: Slaughterhouse Rulez (2018)

“We’re going to let them run our fucking country?”

Slaughterhouse Rulez is a 2018 horror comedy film directed by Crispian Mills. Written by Mills and Henry Fitzherbert, the cast features Asa Butterfield, Finn Cole, Hermione Corfield, Michael Sheen, with Nick Frost and Simon Pegg.

Our hero, Don Wallace, is a wide-eyed new boy from a modest background. Sent to Slaughterhouse School, a boarding school raising the next generation of leaders, to do their family proud after the death of his father.

Don is forced to navigate a baffling new world of arcane rules and rituals. Presided over by sadistic sixth formers, matters of status are aggressively enforced. And any conversation with school goddess Clemsie, is strictly forbidden.

But this ancient and ordered world is about to be shaken to its foundations – literally. A controversial frack site on prize school woodland causes seismic tremors, a mysterious sinkhole and an unspeakable horror to be unleashed.

Soon a new pecking order will be established as pupils, teachers and headmaster become locked in a bloody battle for survival.

Will this movie stop the government from fracking the British countryside? Probably not, but watch it anyway for some mild entertainment.

Slaughterhouse Rulez is quite frankly a clusterfuck and a complete mess, tonally. It tries to juggle comedy, a political statement and a suicide storyline and unfortunately drops the ball on all three. I can’t say I didn’t laugh but I found it pretty difficult to get back into the humour after one the main characters tries to kill themselves…

Besides being not that funny, Slaughterhouse Rulez is also not much of a horror either. Our character introductions last at least 45 minutes and we’re well into an hour of the movie before any real tension begins to rise. Additionally, despite spending so much time on the characters, you learn very little about them and they ultimately result in being very one dimensional. Which for a film that doesn’t have a lot going for it, isn’t great.

A positive is that once the monsters do arrive, their effects and the gore they create are good. Plus, the acting is competent all round, but nothing stand out.

A selling point for Slaughterhouse Rulez was everyone’s favourites, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. Unfortunately, they are wasted and thrown away. It’s difficult to write this pair poorly but somehow Mills and Fitzherbert managed it. I usually mark up horrors for being British because more often than not it has some quirks and charm only a local would get but honestly, I didn’t find anything much here.

A strange mix of St Trinian’s and Scooby Doo, Slaughterhouse Rulez lacks chemistry and creativity. Doing battle with multiple strands of underdeveloped storylines and cutting off entertaining players such as the Headmaster (Michael Sheen) and Head Boy (Tom Rhys-Harries) and leaving us with lesser characters. Nothing offensive here per se, but nothing too impressive either.