Slither (2006) Saturday Monster Movies

James Gunn’s Slither is not a subtle film. Alien parasites slither into people’s mouths and take over their bodies. Victims bloat and burst, slugs ooze through floorboards, and the quaint town of Wheelsy becomes a hive of grotesque, mindless drones. But beneath the ooze and gore lies a striking metaphor. The parasitic invasion is a portrait of sin: shameful, secretive, contagious, and ultimately dehumanizing.

In this world, sin is not just something you do. It is something that does something to you. Once infected, the characters are no longer themselves. The parasite takes root and erases individuality. Desires become grotesque echoes of love, especially in the tragic case of Grant Grant, who believes he is still acting out of devotion to his wife even as he becomes a monster. Like sin, the alien corruption distorts affection into domination, twisting relationship into control.

What stands out in Slither is not just the horror of sin. It is the hopelessness of it. There is no redemption here. No one infected can be saved. There is no grace, no transformation, no healing. The only cure is death. The horror is total, final, and absolute.

This is where the film diverges sharply from a biblical understanding of sin. Scripture is honest, even brutally honest, about the power and consequences of sin. But it is never nihilistic. The gospel is not that sinners are ruined. It is that sinners can be redeemed. The Bible does not avoid grotesque imagery. It tells us we were “dead in our trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1). But it also declares, “But God, being rich in mercy… made us alive together with Christ” (Ephesians 2:4–5).

Slither captures well the horror of unchecked sin. In that way, it functions almost like a hyper-legalistic parable: sin is inescapable and lethal. But that is only half the story. The tragedy is not just what the parasite does to people. It is that no one believes there is any hope for the infected. In the biblical story, Christ comes not just to shield us from sin’s attack, but to go into the heart of the infection and make the unclean clean.

If The Blob was the fear of external threats, Slither is the fear of internal rot. But the Christian hope remains. Even when the infection goes deep, grace goes deeper.