It is a horror movie with mostly positive reviews,
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/slither/

It still bombs badly. It would be interesting to see what went wrong.

My views:

1. It is a R-rating movie; many teenagers won't see it in theaters. (Teenagers are the main target audience for horror movie.)

2. Trailers and TV spots suck! When I see them, I don't know if the movie is horror movie or comedy. As a horror movie trailer/TV spots, they don't look scare enough; As a comedy trailer/TV spots, they don't look funny enough.

After all, this movie may be a good but [harder sell] movie that need indie minded marketing (like Napoleon Dynamite ). This movie would do better if Universal send this movie to Rogue Pictures.

Reviews don't make a difference. The film had limited appeal.

I just didn't realize it was that limited.

I think horror comedies have a niche market.

BUT I WANT EVERYONE TO GO AND SEE THIS!!! DOLCE YOUR GOING TO SEE SLITHER, TONIGHT!!!

I'd say the marketing. Yes, it had limited appeal, but no more limited than Eight Legged Freaks.

But Eight Legged Freaks also tanked.

Horror comedies never do that well. Slither's failure was expected, I think.

Rogue Pictures's Shaun of the Dead did well. ( SLITHER does much worse than what Shaun of the Dead did, at least)

Not as bad tho. It finished with 17m.

$17M in the middle of July is pretty bad.

Well, horror comedies are a tough sell alone (aside from sillier stuff like the Scary Movie flicks), but lower key creature features are a hard sell too.

It seems the horror flicks with the best reviews don't do as well as they should and the ones with poor reviews are hits.

I disagree about the trailer/TV spots though. They were great and couldn't have been better for a movie like this.

it has TONS to do with the rating.... based on reactions of the trailer in my theatre the only people who loved the trailer and would laugh and talk about it etc were the teens, 13 - 16 year olds... the fact that it was R meant the only people who gave a shit about seeing this were not able to... huge mistake making it R instead of PG-13

plain and simple, its a horror/comedy

I think someone on HSX said it best: The worse the reviews, higher the BO.

"huge mistake making it R instead of PG-13"-animosity reigns


sorry, but i will have to disagree. Perhaps a PG13 would have gotten it a little more money, but a PG13 would also have crappified the movie completely. PG13 is what is wrong with horror today. SLiTHER is a great movie the way it is, and the public is to blame. Horror/comedies don't have that big a market, as people don't seem to take them that well. "What? Laugh and be scared? No way! i want my movies to either be all scary like When A Stranger Calls or all funny like Madea's Family Reunion." That seems pretty much it. It's is nice to know that people are absolutely retarded in every way.

I'll tell what went wrong, the trailer.

The trailer just made me want to puke, it was so sick. This was not my idea of entertainment.

Yeah, I just think the advertising didn't look appealing at all.

Creepy crawly creature movies haven't done very well in the past years, plus add the comedy layer equals an even less appealing movie. I think people wanted to either be scared or to laugh, not both.

The trailer sucked in all ways imagineable.

The film looked like ultimate shit, there was no saving it from dancing into the compactor at full speed.

Selling a horror/comedy is almost impossible especially an R-rated one. Eight Legged Freaks did as well as it did (still poorly) because it was PG-13. Too bad as Slither deserved far better.

The advertising was poor really. I thought the trailers made the movie look crappy. And Horror-Comedy is a tough sell. It is hard combo to get people to come into the theater.

This is one of the least promoted horror movies I can remember.

It was always going to have limited appeal. It's just not the kind of film the vast majority of people want to see.

Making it PG-13 wouldn't have helped, it would've taken away the film's entire reason for being. Why bother making a hardcore splatter film if you're going to release it for kids? I dare say if the studio had imposed that rating on Gunn he wouldn't have bothered making it at all.

Rather than taking a step down in the ratings, I think the studio should've given Gunn free reign to go NC-17. If anything - given the type of film it is, and the type of audience it attracts - I think it would've done even better. It certainly couldn't have done any worse. All it's gonna take to usher in a new era of hardcore horror is for one film to break out with an NC-17 rating.

I really agree with this actually. You don't need anything more then Hostel to see that there is a sizable niche audience for this. That movie was marketed for nothing but gore. Eventually I think it will happen. It would probably take Lions Gate to release it though.

Wild random thought here: maybe there are too many horror films out right now. There are three carrying more than 1500 theaters and at least 2 other major releases that haven't quite left first run. Seems like a lot for this type of genre.

I have been thinking about it lately too. I mean the biggest problem is that very many theatres reuse to release NC-17 rated films. However, let's say it wasn't so. If theatre chains agreed to release an NC-17 film normally, I bet it'd still be very successful with right marketing, despite the rating itself, In other words, a film like Hostel with an NC-17 rating and 2,000 theatres would have still made $40+ million.

Look at the premise. How many times do we have to endure a space alien inhabiting a human host that has to infect others to survive?

How many movies have this premise already?


Uncreative writing, poor marketing. Plain and simple.