School's out...

I can barely muster the words necessary to describe the joyous feelings I had when I realised that we have come to a point in history where nobody really remembers Kula Shaker or recognises the terrible proto-cultural appropriation that they peddled as music. There was a time that you couldn't turn on MTV or the radio without being aurally assaulted by their incessant warbling over sitars and tabla beats. The whole thing was a farcical sham; quite aside from having possibly one of the poshest sounding names ever to front a band (tip of the hat to Edward Tudor Pole for a run away victory on that front) Crispian Mills clearly spent his gap year larking about the India sub-continent and came determined to out-hippy the next man down. You couldn't release it nowadays; the absolute whitest of white guys singing in a vaguely parodical Indian accident would get absolutely flamed on social media and you'd hear no more of it (did we just find an actual, practical use for Tumblrinas? Wonders never cease). Worse than that, rumours abounded at the time that his first ever band debuted on one of the stages at a National Front festival chock full of some of the most distasteful individuals you might ever encounter; not exactly an enviable starting point. This is all very well and good, but why bring those terrible memories flooding back now, a decade after we'd assumed we'd heard the last of the likes of Govinda or Tattva? (I YouTubed that shit for morbid curiosity's sake and now I want to punch myself into a coma). Well it turns out that our Crispian has turned his back on music and instead cast his talents into film making. 

I say talents like he's particularly gifted, but as you'll see shortly, that may not entirely be the case. His debut feature was the slightly odd and not widely seen A Fantastic Fear of Everything which isn't terrible, but isn't something I'd recommend as a matter of course. Perhaps downtrodden and licking his wounds from said lukewarm first foray, it took him seven years (not in Tibet although there's mileage in that pun) to bring his sophomore effort to bear.

I will admit to being quite interested in Slaughterhouse Rulez; the trailer had some decent chuckles in it and with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost on board, there's a fairly high percentage chance it's not going to be terrible. The real problem is the exact thing that drew me in the first place: it looks to all intents and purposes like it could be an Edgar Wright movie, but it isn't anywhere near being that good. Not by a very long chalk.

The plot, if we're being brutally honest, is not exactly breaking new ground. It's not even really turning over topsoil really if you want to continue a gardening analogy. Northern loser dropout unexpectedly finds himself transferred to the titular improbably named Slaughterhouse School where he finds himself predictably out of his depth. For reasons I presume only for the express intent of making a political statement, a shady energy company is fracking in the woods by the school grounds and accidentally open some sort of doorway to hell, because of course they do. Despite that being a fairly outlandish set-up for a monster based horror comedy it would probably work OK if it took up the first 15 minutes or so and just got to the gore soaked cat and mouse we all know and love.

There are just too many wasted opportunities here, partially because as a movie it's struggling to find any sort of identity of its own. It's not quite an Inbetweeners style misfits at school comedy (I use that term loosely in reference to the Inbetweeners; I'd rather have my nuts fed through an office shredder than watch that shite) although there are elements of that. There are some half decent lines and a few neat sight gags, as well as the inevitable sex puns, but the biggest chuckles came from the script pilfering stuff from other movies - Gandalf's epic put down of the Balrog gets quoted quietly in the background for example. You could even draw some parallels with Harry Potter if you so chose, but they're scantly realised if they're deliberate. This is nowhere near as nuanced, nor as epic in scope; almost as if they really wanted to get that feeling of a full and rounded world but didn't have the time money or inclination to spend eight whole movies getting there. Horror wise, it's a sort of Attack of the Mutant Mole Rats scenario, but doesn't really bring anything exciting to the table. Despite their obvious differences, the jumble of heroic kids gel together a little too easily; first against the evil prefect (who is basically Draco Malfoy after a steady diet of protein and Nandrolone for a decade) and then against the mutant mole rats buts there's little chemistry between any of them. Quite a lot of the humour here seems to be derived from the premise it's funny to hear kids swear. 

The fracking thing though is my biggest peeve. Don't get me wrong, it's a dumb and potentially disastrous ecological shit-storm of a thing to do and right-minded people should be 100% against it. However, in a teen-comedy-horror it should be just the set-up not the recurring theme that everyone keeps going back to like it's the main villain of the piece. It's not subtle in the least; the script is so desperate to remind you how evil fracking is, it sort of has to cram all the other threads and character arcs into such a tiny amount of space that nobody develops and the loose ends just suddenly find themselves tied up relatively neatly. There are so many sub plots and underlying themes that get rushed though, including an anti suicide message that could have been an entire other film in and of itself. It's a real shame; as much as I'm not really much of a fan of TV as a format, this feels like they could have done the source material much more justice if they'd have given themselves a limited series of eight episodes and a bit more room to breathe.

Ultimately Slaughterhouse Rulez was a half decent watch let down by a messy script and a desperate desire to be an Edgar Wright film without actually ever having anything to do with Edgar Wright. Far from the Cornetto Tilogy, it's more like the half price ASDA own brand knock off your Mum got you because we aren't made of money.