Movie Review: Slaughterhouse Rulez (2018)

Synopsis: When Donald Wallace attends an exclusive boarding school following his father's death, he has a hard time fitting in and only stays because he has a crust on fellow student, Clemsie Lawrence. After breaking school rules by visiting a nearby fracking operation and raising concerns about the environmental damage it is doing to school grounds, Don is punished by being forced to stay on campus during the students' break and finds himself rallying the few friends he has when the subterranean monsters Slaughterhouse was built to contain escape through a sinkhole caused by the fracking.

Who's in it? The movie stars Finn Cole, Hermione Corfield, Asa Butterfield, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost.

Review: We spent most of our day at a city-wide holiday event in Ripon yesterday and, when we got home in the evening, thought about topping the day off with a Christmas movie. However, I wasn't able to decide on one and, after scrolling through our movie channels, came across this film instead. It ended up being better than expected.

From the description, I was under the impression this was going to be another zombie movie. Instead, it turned out to be much more exciting than that, with unnamed creatures that moved quickly and hunted in packs. While the creatures weren't indestructible, they were hard enough to kill and were in a large enough quantity to keep the film entertaining.

The movie also successfully pulled off the horror/comedy part of things. Too many films tend to focus a little too much on the comedy to the point the movie is just dumb while others try to mix in comedy when it would be better as a serious film. This movie found a healthy balance that allowed the occasional laugh while still keeping you on the edge of your seat.

Another thing I found I liked about this movie was it was entertaining even before the creatures showed up. Slaughterhouse itself seemed to have plenty of other dark secrets that didn't involve fracking or monsters. This included a strict military-like system that had a history of driving students to their death, whether it was attempting to escape through the school's maze-like tunnels or killing themselves because someone found out they were homosexual and bullied them. If you throw in the environmental damage from the fracking, which the school was profiting from, it could have been a halfway decent drama/thriller even without the monsters and I can't say that about a lot of films.

Final Opinion: I wasn't sure what to expect when we started watching this but did enjoy it more than I probably would have enjoyed a Christmas movie. It's worth taking the time to watch.

My Grade: A