Simon Pegg and Michael Sheen star in a watchable jape that has plenty of charm but not enough scares
Elite boarding schools have been a favourite microcosm for film-makers to explore over the years: as the crucible of revolution in If…., the breeding ground of spies in Another Country, and the vessel of intellectual liberation in Dead Poets Society. Despite one or two nods and winks (including a picture of If….’s Malcolm McDowell getting plugged in the face with an airgun pellet), this watchable if basically undemanding jape opts to take a very different tack: a teen comedy-horror with little aspiration to make any bigger points other than to chase its group of shrieking and bellowing schoolkids around an educational establishment’s venerable passageways and adjacent woodland.
Strangely enough, the coincidence of the real-world news cycle has given Slaughterhouse Rulez an unlikely topicality: a giant fracking drill in the school’s grounds has disturbed a pack of ravenous subterranean creatures, which emerge on a mission to turn any human they encounter to mince. Presided over by Michael Sheen at his most oleaginous, the student body are the usual mix of hyperviolent crypto-Nazis and snivelling weirdos (though the film-makers have tried to liven things up by adding St Trinians-esque sixth form “goddesses” and a Yorkshire-accented new kid, played by Finn Cole).
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