- Directed by Matthew Goodhue
- Written by Bradley Fowler, Cady Lanigan
- Stars Olivia Rouyre, Lisa Ambalavanar, Stefan Kapicic, Sydney Craven
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 33 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ1Vbh7aJPQ
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This was an absurd creation that was darkly funny throughout. It has many of the slasher tropes, but not a typical killer. Sloths are slow, dumb, cute, fuzzy, harmless little creatures, right? Nope, that’s only what they want us to think. It was well made and so dumb that it ascends to be good.
Synopsis
We open in the jungles of Panama. The happy sloth is happy. Then something eats it–No, it fights off the crocodile and escapes right into the clutches of some hunters.
Emma and Madison, two sisters, talk about Emma becoming the president of her sorority. She talks to a man who owns a sloth for a pet, and he says they’re no trouble at all.
It’s move-in day at the sorority, and stuck-up Brianna doesn’t even remember Dakota. She also wants to be president. We’re introduced to what seems like about six-dozen characters by name, but we’re never gonna remember all that. Ms. Mayflower is there, and she’s the drunken house mother.
Tyler, Emily’s boyfriend, comes for a visit, but he’s assaulted on the way in. Emily asks Ms. Mayflower about her mother, who was president way back in the day.
We cut to the man with the sloth and see that the sloth doesn’t live in a happy place anymore. “What would happen if I don’t give you these pills, huh?” Emily texts him about the sloth. She thinks having a cute mascot will help her win the election. After he sets up a time for her to come over, the sloth tears him apart.
The next morning, Emily comes to the man’s house and meets the sloth. The man’s not around, so she takes him home. Brianna accosts Emily when she gets home, and everyone falls in love with the cute sloth. They adopt it for the house mascot, and Emily announces she’s running for president.
Madison warns Emily about the hazards of using poached animals as pets. “It’s a wild animal, Emily, send it back!” Another friend gives her pills and says the sloth has to take them “for anxiety.” The sloth then— gets on the Internet and checks out Emmily’s social media accounts. When he sees a photo of the exotic animal seller, he gets angry and spits out the pill.
Brianna orders one of her minions, Sarah, to “get rid of the sloth.” There’s a big party that evening, and almost everyone loves the sloth. Sarah takes advantage of the distraction to steal the sloth and set it loose outside.
The sloth then comes inside and drugs Sarah’s drink. She finds out why sloths have such big claws. Emily figures out that the sloth is gone and looks everywhere for it until she finds it in her room.
Time passes, and we get a montage of the sloth killing Brianna’s groupies. Where it stashes the bodies, we do not know.
Madison tries to steal the sloth so that she can take it to a shelter, but Emily catches her. They argue, and Madison gets hit by a car, so that’s quickly settled.
We eventually make it to election night, and it’s all surprisingly cult-like. The house mother chains the door shut to keep everything private. Meanwhile, the sloth checks out the GPS and steals the car keys to drive to the hospital to finish off Madison. There’s a drawn-out, elaborate vote, and Emily is declared the winner.
At the hospital, the sloth sneaks into Madison’s room. He takes a selfie for his own socials and then smothers her with a pillow.
Somehow, the sloth returns. Back at the sorority, it chases Brianna and Emily, so they both know what’s going on now. “He’s like a cute Chucky!”
Emily knocks the sloth out the window, but when she looks again, it’s gone. The sloth then electrifies the shower, killing a whole bunch of the girls. One by one, the sloth picks off many of the girls, sparing Emily, and she has a gun.
Ms. Mayflower staggers in, completely sloshed, and wonders where all the girls are. She runs into the sloth and beats it severely. When the sloth gets her from behind, Mayflower gives an impassioned dying speech to Emily.
Emily thinks about Mayflower’s dying words and the words of encouragement from all the dead girls. She runs into Tyler and Zenny in the hallway, but before they can leave, they must rescue Brianna, who’s trapped in her room.
Zenny has a bunch of ninja weapons and battles with the little sloth. They both end up stabbed, but the sloth gets back up– until it’s shot by Madison, IV bag in tow, who didn’t die in the hospital.
The sloth still hasn’t died, so Emily goes back in for it, alone. Brianna comes down the stairs with the tiara-wearing sloth on her back. Brianna runs away as the sloth jumps on Emily. Emily pulls the gun and shoots the sloth again. She finally impales the fuzzy little creature with the tiara.
The sloth looks up pitifully and gestures to a photo of Panama on the wall. “Home,” it says.
We cut to the following year at pledge time. Emily, Madison, Brianna, and Zenny are handing out pamphlets about taking animals from the wilderness.
Commentary
Ah, the sorority president. I see they’re all worrying about the truly important things in life. The little “profiles” of the characters are a nice idea, but they don’t stay onscreen long enough to read them, so they aren’t really that helpful.
The sloth is a puppet, which is obvious from the get-go. It definitely gives off Mogwai vibes from “Gremlins(1984),” at least in the beginning. Still, he’s a really smart sloth who can read, use a mouse, and browse the internet. That was impressive– until he stole a car and used a GPS. Wow!
It plays on many of the usual tropes from slasher films, borrowing from many major hits. This one, however, is stupid to the point of hilarity. It’s really a terrible film, but it’s also really hard not to laugh throughout it.