Amongst the google searches for this one you'll find "Is Slotherhouse a real film?" and that says a lot. When the first poster and trailer dropped, I suspected it the work of AI, but now that the film is out on streaming, we should be glad it exists. A ludicrous horror-comedy that hits all the right notes in gore, cringe, and puns, Slotherhouse is quintessential fun cinema. It may be set in a college where internalized misogyny is completely off the charts as young women bruise and batter each other's egos in service of the queen bee Brianna (Sydney Craven) and may attempt just a tiny bit of character development to keep the ball rolling, but honestly, who cares? It's a film that completely leans into the absurd, the over the top, the ridiculous, and it does it surprisingly well.

No doubt, the star of the show is the fluffy murderous creature from the film's title. A sloth slashing its way through college girls? It's absurd enough to work and scandalous enough to not be offensive. The small cuddly sloth in the film is no CGI, it's wonky and animatronic (quite obviously so), a fact which draws even more laughter for good measure. In the making of Alpha, there are nods to classic horror films and their proficient use of practical effects, as well as The Gremlins, of course. But... if the malicious sloth is named Alpha, does that mean the girls, when fighting for their lives, are actually fighting against masculinity? Eeek. The politics are all over the place and probably for the better, as no one would truly enjoy watching this for any other reason than pure outrageous entertainment. A sloth is better off killing than lecturing us on morality, right?