Kris Van der Bijl

Slotherhouse is a 2023 comedy horror movie about a killer sloth who goes on a murder spree in a North American college sorority. Taking it seriously removes what makes the movie fun and unique. I think that it is a clear expression of the dangers of idealizing foreign agents to the point where humanity can no longer be interpolated. They kill because they need a way out.

The killer sloth is a contender for the role of protagonist in the movie. He is taken from a remote South American jungle. He is captured by poachers and transported to the United States. While it can be argued that Emily Young, played by Lisa Ambalavanar, is the protagonist, I think that it is fun to question this. She is the likable American that we are supposed to support. Her goal is to become head of the Sigma Lambda Theta sorority, but her unpopularity stands in the way. This changes when she rescues a sloth from an evil poacher and takes him back to the sorority. She names him Alpha and talks the other girls into making him their mascot. Lisa does a good deed in rescuing Alpha, but her motives for keeping him borders on altruism.

I say “borders” because the Sloth is very likable and appears happy. The movie uses a puppet for Alpha. It is just low-design enough for it to appear both real and unreal, like some sort of off-brand McDonald’s, which even an American college audience will understand. Alpha is an incredibly likable being. He drinks beer, drives cars, and later shoots a handgun. These might seem like mundane tasks, but they are incredibly difficult to do when you are a sloth. It’s even more challenging when your only point of reference to the human world comes from poachers and sorority girls.

Alpha is quite explicit about his goal in the movie. Despite what the title suggests, Alpha’s main goal is to return back to his home. Lisa notices this from Alpha repeatedly pointing towards non-descript pictures of a remote place that North Americans probably see as South America. So, when Alpha goes on his murderous rage, is it wholly unjustified? Murder can be a challenge to argue for, and violent murder even more so, particularly when they are college-aged American girls. Yes, the obnoxious girls are welcome to die, but the good-hearted ones deserve to be missed.

A function of US movies has always been that killing and murder are justified if those who are murdered go against whatever values the filmmakers are trying to promote. Obnoxious girls are obnoxious and therefore can die without an audience feeling so much pity that they need to turn the movie off. The industry post-911 has gotten away with the killing of nameless Middle Eastern people under the idea that they represent anti-American values. Nazis and Russians are the obvious enemies, and are well within their rights to die, if Steven Spielberg is involved.

To say that an Outsider is often the antagonist is not great film criticism. It is as obvious as saying that American movies reflect American culture. A goal of mine with this blog is to go beyond the obvious and the dull. Criticism is effortless when it is just a summary or just rhetoric.

I began this piece by saying that the movie expresses the danger of idealizing foreign agents. I want to expand on this to better express what I currently believe to be a complex critical point. Alpha the sloth is idealized because of his difference from the girls in the sorority. He is a sloth, a non-human. He is a male. He can be picked up and paraded by the girls to garner attention. While he is a sloth, he carries many more signs of difference which the girls cannot comprehend. He is a symbol of what the girls can never be through his myriad of differences. He is not just a sloth. He is what the girls are not, and they cherish him for the additions that he brings.

Alpha is the anti-human to the world of College sorority girls. They cannot see him as equal even when he does human activities like driving and sunbathing. His mimicry does not allow him equal status, nor does it afford him the right to return to where he came from. His only way to access his goal – never forget that a story forces characters to act towards their goals – is to break from the world. Going on a murder spree is not evil: it is the only way out for him.

There is no point in blaming the girls for either their naivety or their complicity in what they did to force Alpha to murder. The world did not prepare them for a drinking-puppet sloth, so they did not know how to view him as anything other than foreign. That being said, I do not believe in those who call fear of the unknown something primal. Writers who claim to have an evil being that hearkens to something primal should be thrown into solitary confinement just to see that it is their own ideas that create the primal. Fear of the unknown and idealization of the unknown is within. When it is projected as an outward response, it is really a justification for already existing inside issues; like insecurity, or wanting to be popular.