Slaugh­ter­house Rulez

It’s no secret that the likes of Eton and Har­row are breed­ing grounds for the country’s one-per­centers. Pow­er begets more pow­er, and nowhere churns out future world lead­ers and busi­ness mag­nates like England’s top pri­vate schools. These insti­tu­tions have fas­ci­nat­ed film­mak­ers for years, from the high spir­it­ed mis­chief of St Trinian’s to Lind­say Anderson’s sem­i­nal ​’60s satire, if…..

In this sense, Slaugh­ter­house Rulez has a rich prov­i­dence, and indeed enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly nods towards its pre­de­ces­sors – a pho­to­graph of young Mal­colm McDow­ell as Mick Travis is pinned to a dorm wall. This aware­ness of its influ­ences and place in the wider canon could ele­vate Crispi­an Mills’ film into a beast as rev­o­lu­tion­ary as Anderson’s film was some 50 years ago. If… only.

Young Don Wal­lace (Finn Cole) is sent to the tit­u­lar Slaugh­ter­house Acad­e­my fol­low­ing the death of his father, where he soon encoun­ters the school’s pompous head­mas­ter (Michael Sheen), mopey crick­et-lov­ing teacher Mered­ith House­man (Simon Pegg), his snuff-snort­ing room­mate Willough­by Blake (Asa But­ter­field) and a psy­chot­ic pupil named Clegg (Tom Rhys Har­ries). Of course there’s the req­ui­site ​‘fit girl’ too, in the shape of Clem­sie Lawrence (Hermione Corfield).

But beyond all the high school dra­ma play­ing out at their board­ing school, there’s also some frack­ing tak­ing place on the grounds, sanc­tioned by the head­mas­ter and protest­ed by a group of drug-tak­ing hip­pies who have set up a protest camp near­by, led by Woodrow ​‘Woody’ Chap­man (Nick Frost). Said frack­ing leads to a grue­some dis­cov­ery, adding to the myr­i­ad of prob­lems the stu­dents face at the archa­ic institution.

If this all sounds a bit con­fus­ing, it speaks to a plot strained by too many ideas and not enough steam to see them through. Com­bin­ing a (large­ly) male twist on St Trini­ans with the likes of Greek mythol­o­gy and crea­ture fea­ture hor­ror, while as pre­vi­ous­ly men­tioned bor­row­ing very heav­i­ly from if…, it’s a deriv­a­tive sum of its parts, with the envi­ron­men­tal sub­plot a par­tic­u­lar low point in the film’s attempts to be rel­e­vant to today. The young cast are marred by a ter­ri­ble script, and even Simon Pegg and Nick Frost don’t get much of a chance to be fun­ny giv­en that their char­ac­ters are such boor­ish caricatures.

In fact, the film only seems inter­est­ed in paint­ing with broad brush­strokes. We have the token North­ern stu­dent, the token gay stu­dent, the token hot girl, the token smart Asian stu­dent, the token bul­lied nerd, the token bul­ly. Even the crea­tures which the stu­dents ulti­mate­ly find them­selves up against feel gener­ic, like they were thrown into the sto­ry as an after­thought. The film sets up all the domi­nos, but nev­er man­ages to knock them down, and the result is an under­whelm­ing, unmem­o­rable paint-by-num­bers hor­ror-com­e­dy that fails to deliv­er on either part of that promise.