Stop worrying. What they gonta do - eat you alive?
Slaughterhouse Rulez is a raucous horror comedy and the first film from Stolen Pictures, a production company started up by Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. They both feature in it too, inviting comparisons with their Cornetto Trilogy (Shaun of the Dead/Hot Fuzz/The World's End). Unfair, perhaps, since the Pegg/Edgar Wright-written opuses have a very specific kind of genius. Those are high standards to match - and while this new film has its pleasures, it only makes it part of the way.
Don Wallace (Peaky Blinders' Finn Cole) is a working-class lad who achieves a place at the prestigious Slaughterhouse, a private school of Etonian grandeur and pomposity. It's a training ground for the next generation of great and not-so-good, with a fierce pecking order and all the bullying that accompanies. The Headmaster (appropriately bat-like in robes to match his school nickname) has made a deal with a fracking company who have begun drilling on school property. What they disturb is a literally monstrous link with the sinister Slaughterhouse past. It's one that Don along with his new friends, like roommate Willoughby (Journey's End star Asa Butterfield) and goddess of the Sixth Form Clemsie Lawrence (Hermione Corfield) must attempt to survive over one blood-spattered weekend.
Written and co-directed by Crispian Mills, one-time lead singer with Kula Shaker, Slaughterhouse is at its best when mocking private boarding schools - as though Mills' own experience in such places is burnt into his psyche. Drab Classics lessons, a decadent and entitled Sixth Form, ritual hazing for juniors - it's all lampooned with relish, not least the notion that this is a training-ground for the British leaders of tomorrow. Tom Rhys Harries plays a Draco Malfoy-esque bullying prefect, while the high-point is Michael Sheen's headmaster, a preening and corrupt study in smugness with a love of old-school connections. The whole thing deliberately references classic school satire If.... , but splices it with schlocky monster-horror.
Here's where the movie stumbles. Whereas Edgar Wright's trio of Britcoms combined and subverted genres with endless wit and invention, Slaughterhouse fails to link it all together into a satisfying whole or indeed to deliver it with a sufficiently sharp comic edge. There are great moments of satire and of horror-comedy splatter, but it never meshes successfully overall, while some mean-spirited moments clash with the broader tone. Neither Pegg nor Frost are developed enough to work as characters, and the same goes for the story's young leads. Cole and Corfield are likeable enough to make you root for them, but only Butterfield is given any real depth as the sardonic and tormented Willoughby. (Also young Kit Connor delivers a handful of satisfyingly funny moments as persecuted junior Wootton.)
There's enough that goes right in the film, including some impressive cinematography, to suggest what it could have been. And for sure Slaughterhouse Rulez entertains in the moment - not least during one extended sequences inside a Skoda. But with the Shaun of the Dead leads both taking on significant roles it's impossible not the make that Cornetto connection and be reminded of similar, substantially better movies. Shaun was a keeper. Slaughterhouse will entertain for an evening, but that's all.
Gut Reaction: Laughed enough to make it worthwhile, but not enough to think about it afterwards.
Where Are the Women?: There are two gals in our plucky band of heroes rather than the token of yesteryear, and they're as well developed as anyone else (i.e. not very).
Ed's Verdict: 5.5/10. Passably entertaining, without living up to its potential. Best served up at home with a couple of beers.
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