Slasher Season 1 Review

Episode Guide

An Eye For An Eye
Digging Your Grave With Your Teeth
Like As Fire Eateth Up and Burneth Wood
As Water Is Corrupted Unless It Moves
Ill-Gotten Gains
The One Who Sows His Own Flesh
In the Pride Of His Face
Soon Your Own Eyes Will See

When you set out to turn a slasher movie into a TV series, you can’t help but expect some of the usual tropes to crop up. Slasher’s 8 episodes are gruesome and well paced but are also haunted by the same problems this genre of movies have. Chock full of poor characterisation, questionable acting and illogical character choices, Slasher stumbles clumsily over every cliche before reaching its incredulous finale.

The story begins Halloween 1988. A menacing masked man commits a gruesome murder that rocks the quiet town of Waterbury. Surrounded by dead bodies and found by police cradling a baby, the authorities apprehend the killer to bring an end to the saga. Or so they thought. Fast forward to present day and that baby is now a grown woman, Sarah (Katie McGrath). When she decides to move back to the house her parents were killed in, a new killer emerges dressed in the same menacing costume and begins killing off residents of the town. Basing the murders on the seven deadly sins, there’s a slight hint of thriller film Se7en thrown in but its barely noticeable. Some of the subplots here do feel unnecessarily dragged out and contrived, especially one revolving around the town’s newspapers. Adding to this are the sex scenes and excessive gore that typify this genre but feel forced at times and detract from the intriguing main plot line.

The mystery around who’s committed the murders behind the mask is enough to see you through until the climactic ending but taking this away, its tough to find more to be excited about. The murders themselves are deliciously gory and surprisingly imaginative, centering aroung the seven deadly sins. Although the buckets of gore and bloodcurdling screams are staples of this sort of horror, beyond a few creative deaths there really isn’t anything here thats particularly new or different that hasn’t been done before, and better, elsewhere.

If the characters were likeable and perhaps more fleshed out this could be overlooked but as it stands, Slasher is very average. Lead protagonist Sarah is astonishingly bad, with strained acting and failing to elicit even a hint of emotion through vast periods of the show. The rest of the cast range from bad through to average and because of this, its really difficult to empathise with any of the characters as they’re picked off one by one.

Despite its shortcomings, there is still fun to be had here. The plot line is intriguing and paced well with a perfect length to keep you watching to find out who’s behind the mask. Whilst its not the best horror you’re likely to see, Slasher feels content to revel in its cliche riddled plot to tick all the boxes but never stray beyond the boundaries it sets for itself. Slasher is certainly an enjoyable show clearly made with love for the genre, but its execution places it firmly in the realm of mediocrity.