SummaryAn illustrious British boarding school becomes a bloody battleground when a mysterious sinkhole appears at a nearby fracking site unleashing unspeakable horror.
SummaryAn illustrious British boarding school becomes a bloody battleground when a mysterious sinkhole appears at a nearby fracking site unleashing unspeakable horror.
Crispian Mills directs with zip, throwing things together with a breathlessness that largely distracts from the fact that, for a horror-comedy, Slaughterhouse Rulez is neither particularly scary nor especially funny. But it does have an amiable sort of charm.
Very funny and gory anti-establishment riot with a standout cast. Asa Butterfield and Finn Cole make a terrific and rather touching double act, while Michael Sheen’s oily headmaster is a hoot. Cult classic in the making
Feels like it had Simon Pegg and Nick Frost just to piggy back on their success from their previous zombie etc movies. But this wasn't as great. It also felt corny at times and the place where all those kids were learning or whatever was so weird itself and unrealistic, basically good actors but mediocre plot
Showing more enthusiasm than aptitude, this earns ‘could do better if it tried’ on its report card — but it’s a strange enough genre mix to be vaguely worth a look.
There’s nothing particularly awful about the film (title aside), but it never develops into the “Shaun of the Dead”-like social satire it strains to be.
This movie pointed to interesting stuff but ends up going nowhere and more than anything ends up wasting a good cast.
The comedy horror mix is mediocre and the fact that this mix fails to work properly becomes more problematic with the slow pace and the evident lack of balance.
This could've become a small dark cult gem and I have no doubt that it will become one for some viewers, but for me any attempt to transcend got lost along the way.
This is vastly, vastly inferior to Simon Pegg and Nick Frost's past collaborations. If you come to this expecting Shaun of the Dead or The World's End, you're going to be sorely disappointed. Slaughterhouse Rulez wastes a lot of time trying to be Hogwarts in hell before the monsters show up and start eating everybody. A poor kid enrolls in a posh British prep school, where the headmaster has made a deal with a fracking company to extract gas on the school grounds. Does the lake explode in a fiery ball of gas? Perfectly normal. But then the fracking frackers pop open a hole filled with monsters, who eat everybody. Prats just taste better. There were a few promising moments near the beginning, and it really looks like Asa Butterfield had more to offer as a barely closeted student whose roommate committed suicide last term, but that more interesting story gets lost pretty quick. The monster design isn't half bad, and as far as silly romps in which comically evil and stupid people get torn in half by monsters, this is passable. It takes shots at some pretty easy targets - the British aristocracy as well as fracking companies - but never really develops its critique to a level that's very interesting. The cast is surprisingly stacked, but everyone is phoning it in. Margot Robbie even shows up from time to time, but always on a phone screen and only for a few seconds - one wonders why she agreed to be part of this at all. If, suddenly and on the spot, you asked Michael Sheen to improvise the headmaster of a stuffy British academy, you'd get the performance he delivers here. Tom Rhys Harries is a standout because he looks like he's having a lot of fun playing an Aryan house prefect who is allergic to mercy, or anything else approaching humanity.