Review: Slow Pokes
"WHY WAS IT FAST? WHY THE FUCK WAS IT FAST?"
Science fiction is about many things, but that moment - when your sense of perspective, balance, reality - takes a sudden, shocking lurch sideways and turns all your expectations, beliefs and comforting foundations roughly upside-down - that moment is pure gold.
Take the humble sloth, for example. Small, cute, furry, cuddly... OK, it has some pretty wicked-looking talons there; long, curved, pointed, probably the original inspiration for the claws of Marvel's Wolverine... but that's OK because we're talking about sloths here, and the one overriding characteristic of these adorable little teddy-bear-like creatures is that they are SLOW.
Hence the name, yeah?
Lovely.
But ... WHAT IF?
What if someone decided to tinker with their DNA and make the little buggers FAST?
Such is the premise of writer Steve Urena and artist Juan Romera's Slow Pokes. Five kids celebrate their high school graduation with a trip to Rareview, a huge complex containing an indoor amusement park and a scientific research laboratory (Yeah, suspend your disbelief, OK?) ...
Resident boffin Eden Rare has taken it upon herself to ensure the survival of sloths in an increasingly endangering world by giving them a bit more get-up-and-go. Little does she realise that she may have saved one species from extinction at the expense of another ... Her own!
Teen LJ is snapping a shot of one of the endearing beasts with his phone when he has his we're-not-in-Kansas-anymore moment ... the newly upgraded animals are not just fast, they are also strong and very, very, VERY aggressive. All that lethargy was keeping a lid on a savage bloodlust that knows no bounds.
Who knew?
The graduation soirée soon turns into a desperate race for survival as our heroes flee the maniacal mammals, who launch headlong into a joyful orgy of decapitation, decorating the fairground with gore.
I could say that this is an astute commentary on humankind's betrayal of the ecosystem, or an ironic take on the old morality tale of playing God with nature ... but it ain't. It's a slasher comic, and a comedy one. If you're a fan of such films as Sharknado, Zombeavers or the like, this type of hyper-violent absurdity will be right up your alley. It follows the time-honoured slasher tropes: delinquent, horny teens, ruthless scientist and of course the demonic rampaging monsters, red in tooth and claw. The not-so-slothful sloths here are the stuff of nightmare horror movies, eviscerating, disembowelling and slicing and dicing every human within range of their razor-sharp talons. Not since the bunny rabbit in Monty Python's Holy Grail has an amiable little critter delivered such wanton, unrelenting carnage.
If tongue-in-cheek OTT violence rings your bell, here it is; blood galore and guts aplenty. But be warned, you may never be able to take the kids to a petting zoo again without breaking into a cold sweat...
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Zak Webber
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