Featured DVD Review: Slaughterhouse Rulez

June 17, 2019

Slaughterhouse Rulez - Buy from Amazon: DVD
Video on Demand

Slaughterhouse Rulez is the first film produced by Nick Frost and Simon Pegg’s new production company. I was really looking forward to the movie, but then the reviews came out and my enthusiasm dampened, a lot. Is it better than its Tomatometer Score? Or is having low expectations the only way to see this film?

The Movie

We first meet Don Wallace as he’s watching a really old video about a boarding school that his mom wants him to go to. It’s called Slaughterhouse and he does comment on that name. His mom is able to use some parental guilt to get him to go.

Once there Don quickly meets one of the staff, Mr. Houseman, and his new roommate, Will Blake. He also learns that Will’s previous roommate is no longer at Slaughterhouse, but the circumstances of the student’s departure are left a mystery. While waiting for the opening day ceremony, Don bumps into Clemsie Lawrence, an upperclassmen, but talking to her upsets fellow upperclassmen and school bully, Clegg. There’s a speech by the headmaster, nicknamed The Bat, which is interrupted by one of Woody’s protesters protesting about the fracking on school grounds. It isn’t just paranoia either, as a sinkhole recently appeared.

In fact, Don and Will stumble across this sinkhole while trying to take a shortcut through the woods. The fracking company chase them off, only for them to run into Woody and his group, who immediately try and sell them drugs, before explaining the plot of the movie. Fracking bad. Karma going to get you.

It takes over 20 minutes for the Karma to finally show up and even then the action doesn’t really start for a while.

Slaughterhouse Rulez needed at least one or two passes at the script level before it went into production. It has a bloated script with too many elements that should have been cut in an early draft. Simon Pegg is mostly wasted in this movie and has a subplot with Margot Robbie that should have been entirely cut from the film, as it wasn’t engaging and just wasted time. Sadly, as padded as his role is, Simon Pegg is the adult member of the cast that is given the most to do and therefore has the most justification for being in the movie. A few of the younger cast are more fleshed out, but even then Don and Will are on screen more than the character depth demands. I guess that leaves Clemsie as the only one whose screen time matches the writing.

There’s another problem with the film, the environmental message; It’s way too ham-fisted to be effective. Even if you support the message, it is so ineffective and takes up so much time that it kills the pacing. This is made so much worse by the budget, which was clearly not a lot, meaning they didn’t have enough money to shoot the monsters more than the bare minimum. At least I assume that’s why the first part of the movie was padded out so much and the monsters don’t appear in the film all that much.

That said, there are parts that worked. When the cast were given something to work with, they were able to rise to the occasion. Additionally, the monsters / gore effects were fun and the action scenes were clearly the best parts of the movie.

The Extras

There are no extras. This isn’t surprising given the film’s struggles at the box office.

The Verdict

Parts of Slaughterhouse Rulez work, but not enough to be satisfied with the film as a whole. It’s not terrible, but merely average at best. There are not extras on the DVD, so if you are interested, I would stick with a Video on Demand rental.

C.S.Strowbridge

Filed under: Video Review, Slaughterhouse Rulez, Asa Butterfield, Nick Frost, Simon Pegg, Michael Sheen, Margot Robbie, Jo Hartley, Hermione Corfield, Finn Cole, Tom Rhys-Harries