HOLLYWOOD -- Vancouver actress Tania Saulnier may star in Slither, but she's still not certain how to describe it.
"It's scary, but it's funny. It's gross, but that's what makes it fun," says Saulnier, who plays a teenager whose parents are turned into ravenous zombies by alien parasites.
She recalls what an eye-opener her first meeting was with James Gunn, who wrote and directed this horror sci-fi spoof.
"When I read the screenplay, I thought it was going to be this over-the-top sci-fi comedy with a lot of blood.
"James ... didn't want any of us to try to be funny. He wanted everyone to act as normal and realistic as possible."
Not an easy chore for Saulnier, who first meets the slug-like parasites when she's taking a bath.
"The slugs are primarily CGI that were added after the film was shot, so I had to call on all my acting skills to basically react to nothing."
The major exception for Saulnier was the slug that almost gets down her throat.
"There were three of those slugs.
"There was one with a string attached so they could make it squirm in my mouth and one that was basically just a mouth piece."
The most nauseating slug was the one she had to pull from her mouth and throw against the wall.
"It looked super gross. I could see all the fake blood swishing around in it and the veins all over it."
But Saulnier never complained, because what she had to do was nothing compared to Michael Rooker, who gets turned into a gigantic squid.
"Poor Michael had to be in that enormous prosthetic costume for eight hours each day. The head piece put such pressure on his shoulders, but he never complained."
Saulnier, 24, has been acting in film since she was 15, and logged two years worth of work on the Canadian youth series Caitlin's Way, which was shot in Medicine Hat.
"I played the nasty girl arch-enemy of the heroine Caitlin. It was an incredible part to start my career off with."
Saulnier recently shot The Invisible with Marcia Gay Harden and fellow Canadian Justin Chatwin, who played Tom Cruise's son in War of the Worlds.
