Director: Matthew Goodhue
Year: 2023
Country: USA/Serbia
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Creature Feature; Horror/Comedy
Plot:
Trying to win an important election, a teen desperate to become the new head of her local sorority takes in an exotic sloth as a house mascot to try to help her campaign, but when a series of bodies show up around campus pointing to the creature being responsible she tries to stop its rampage.
Review:
This was a slightly disappointing if still highly enjoyable effort. One of the more enjoyable factors found here is the initial setup that brings everything together in a rather fun starting point. As this starts with a big exposition on the prospective members of the sorority before the fateful election, who they are, and what each one is about as the purposes for how to conduct their chances sets this up nicely as a generally typical college scenario. The desire for popularity that drives her to grab the sloth from the animal poacher and bring it to the sorority to help her generate more votes as a fleeting glimpse of popularity is a rather fun way to play that factor up as well as provide a means of getting the creature to the house for its rampage.
The means of getting the sloth to do its rampage is immensely fun as well, allowing the creature’s legendary abilities to set a slew of impressive stalking scenes in the place where the creature upends those stories to strike with a sense of speed and ferocity that’s unexpected. From the attack on the sorority member who left it outside in the rain, a montage of surprise ambushes on other random members of the house during its stay, or the appearance at the hospital to finish a failed attempt from earlier, this has a solid slew of goofy sequences to put the creature into absurd positions to finish others off. The series of interactions that occur trying to stop the creature in the house features a solid bit of suspense alongside the goofiness of what’s going on, and with the great practical sloth puppet here provides a lot to like.
There are some issues here that hold this one down. The main drawback with this one is the generally unexplained and illogical means through which the creature changes from a stalking animal to the more humanoid slasher this turns into. The idea of the creature stalking people through social media devices, utilizing tools in the way it does when it doesn’t have any way of understanding it, or just simply trying to force the issue by the humanistic antics where it’s trying to be cute and cuddly just don’t always work. This is a running theme throughout here where the comedy doesn’t always work and it’s usually forced to the point of not being funny anymore or just not funny in the first place which does make this somewhat of a slough to get through.
The other factor here is the film’s drained attitude that doesn’t let this one become the kind of wild and over-the-top genre effort it wants to be. The lack of comedy in the film is a big factor to that but there’s also the other big factors to hold it back in the lack of gore or on-screen kills. The family-friendly rating has quite a bit to do with neutering this one since the lack of really wild kills or gore to help build up the wild concept at play is a major reason why this one struggles to get going when this tries to play up the bonkers idea of a sloth running wild in a sorority killing people but either cuts away from the kill or simply settles for blood splatter. This does get somewhat tiresome as it plays out and is what ends up bringing this one down.
Overview: ***/5
An enjoyable if somewhat disappointing creature feature, there’s enough going on here to be likable enough if still somewhat undermined by the big flaws here that lower this from what it should’ve been. Those who are intrigued by the concept or are not really bothered by the flaws will have a lot to like here while most others out there should heed real caution with this one.
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