Rating: C+
Dir: Matthew Goodhue
Star: Lisa Ambalavanar, Sydney Craven, Olivia Rouyre, Stefan Kapicic
I first saw the title, and didn’t realize the premise, so just thought “That’s an odd way to spell slaughterhouse”. The moment I figured out it was about a killer sloth going on the rampage was a revelation of near-religious proportions. Naturally, it had to be seen, with obviously low expectations, resulting from the awareness this was, very clearly, a film whose title came first. Those expectations were pleasantly exceeded, at least when the makers embrace the insanity. The sloth, depicted mostly by puppets, is easily the best thing about the movie. It just needs a better agent. For the human element is tiresome and uninteresting, especially when not directly involved in slothicide.
It’s clear from the start this is not to be taken seriously. In Central America, a sloth is pulled into the water by the crocodile, only to emerge briefly triumphant in the battle, before being captured by exotic animal poachers. Through a series of circumstances too feeble to repeat here, she ends up the mascot, called Alpha, of sorority Sigma Lambda Theta, where Emily (Ambalavanar) and Brianna (Craven) are engaged in a fierce tussle for the position of house president. When Alpha sees a photo of Brianna with the poacher, she decides to throw her lot in with Emily to enormous electoral effect – partly by being adorably slothy, and partly by killing everyone who gets in Emily’s way, or threatens to take Alpha away from her new-found college life.
She is no ordinary jungle animal, and that’s where the film came close to breaking me. I could accept Alpha surfing the web, or dropping drugs in a victim’s drink. I could just about tolerate her taking Emily’s car-keys and driving to the hospital to finish off a victim – wearing a seat-belt, naturally, this sloth being safety conscious. But I teetered on the edge of implosion when Alpha not only tries to suffocate her victim with a pillow, she poses beforehand for a selfie and posts it on social media. No, really. What the actual…? The finale, where Alpha proves absolutely as unstoppable as Jason Vorhees, is almost restrained and plausible in comparison. Albeit, only in comparison. When it’s playing with the tropes and clichés of horror, this is fun.
When it isn’t, however… Bleh. It feels like the PG-13 rating limits this from going into the full-bore excess it needs, while Emily, Brianna and the rest of the college Barbies are forgettable at best, and irritating at worst. For example, there’s a subplot about Emily wanting to follow in her mother’s footsteps, since she was an SLT president back in her day. Guess what? We. Don’t. Care. Every second wasted on this vapid nonsense, is time which could have been better spent, oh, watching a sloth play dodgeball. Yes: that is a thing, thank you for asking. I’d not be averse for this to turn into a franchise, providing the problems in this installment could be addressed.