Review: Slaughterhouse Rulez

The first offering from Simon Pegg and Nick Frost’s new production company, Stolen Picture, seems at first glance to be a continuation of the duo’s successful series of films that began with Shaun of the Dead and ended with Simon Pegg fronting Hollywood blockbusters such as Mission Impossible or Star Trek, and Nick Frost playing Santa Claus on Doctor Who. Set in a Gormenghastian elite boarding school, where the upper sixth students run the school and the form masters seem oblivious to anything but their own pecadillos, the plot centers around a fracking company being given access to the school grounds, and by doing so unleashing blood thirsty monsters, intent on consuming all in their path.

There is a lot of the duo’s former genius in this film. The relentless onslaught of the demon dogs, and the protagonists attempt to defend themselves with whatever implements come to hand including, yes, a cricket bat is very reminiscent of Shaun of the Dead. The strict hierarchy of the school, and the ominous hints of a dark secrets and a hidden agenda recalls Hot Fuzz and its village council. The unleashing of dark demons due to the fracking activities, a slight apocalyptic note, and the contrasting of the protagonists’ relationship problems with the more pressing problem of fighting for survival is strongly reminiscent of The World’s End.

The only problem is that this is not these films. Pegg and Frost didn’t write it, and Edgar Wright certainly didn’t direct it, despite the frequent attempts by the actual director, Crispian Mills, to imitate his style. In the former trio’s hands, I suspect this might have might a quite capable film. There were several genuinely good moments to it, some of which made me laugh, some of which had me shouting at the main character, Don, to realise that he was there to save those around him rather than the other way around, and some of which were just fun action moments.

In fact, and I suspect this is the real problem, it would have made several capable films. There was just so much thrown in there. A plot about Don’s roommate, Will, and his relationship with both his ex-lover and the sadistic sixth former, Clegg, was extremely well put together, but utterly sabotaged by the sudden switch to survival horror film about halfway through. The horror film section (the weakest part, notably) had a lot of promise, especially in the Alien-esque escape from the underground tunnels, but was derailed both by the weird interjection of Simon Pegg’s relationship problems, and the confused set up, which barely described the origin of the monsters except as some ominous dots on a screen, and a barely there back story about the founder of the school and some references to immortality. And the comedy, which did make me laugh out loud on a number of occasions, was gone as soon as it arrived, and arrived very infrequently, leaving me feeling that the writer’s kept suddenly remembering it was supposed to be a comedy, throwing in a single joke, and moving on.

Overall, I would say this was a film that could have benefited from some serious editing. Like the Harry Potter films that it randomly duplicates and then forgets about again, it has depth and an interesting world but, unlike the Harry Potter films, it doesn’t allow itself time to explore any of it. If it dumped the monsters, tied together some of the random backstories, and picked just one story to focus on, I think this would have been a fun beginning to the Pegg/Frost experiment in film production.

As it is, it remains an interesting but ultimately failed offering from that bloke who used to be the lead singer in Kula Shaker.