Dissecting The Five Twisted Seasons of ‘Slasher’
Matthew Daniels
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Aaron Martin’s gloriously twisted anthology series has been shocking audiences since its first wounds were carved back in 2016. Canadian production Slasher takes the little-used format of an anthology show and pairs it with the classic whodunit, albeit with its own uniquely wicked touch and a few extra buckets of blood.
Slasher had its humble beginnings on the short-lived platform Chiller in 2016 before it slipped off this mortal coil not long after. Slasher then spent two seasons on streaming behemoth Netflix before finding a more appropriately macabre place on popular horror platform Shudder for its latest two seasons.
If you haven’t seen the show, Slasher takes the simple premise of masked killers and horror tropes and twists them into a more hideous form using its own unique formula, usually over eight brutal episodes, and gradually reveals a story full of sickening revelations. The idea may be straightforward but its execution is anything but. Slasher is an exquisitely grotesque show and lives by its own disturbed book. It just feels different from anything else in a similar vein and that’s one of many reasons why this show is so beloved among horror fans. Yet it’s still a show that may have slipped under your radar due to its many platform changes.
So, why should it be on your watchlist?
Each season takes on an extravagant new story, a new setting, interesting (and sometimes borderline crazy) new characters, and, best of all, a vicious new killer. These psychotic seasonal killers are a substantial part of what makes Slasher so brilliant, with most being carefully crafted creations with something bizarre or distinctive about them. Season 3’s ‘The Druid’ for example was kitted-out with a somewhat alternate lightweight hooded black jacket with straps and buckles and hid behind a ghoulish black polygon mask with blue neon tubes forming the shapes of its eyes and stitched-up mouth. Season 4’s ‘The Gentleman’ is perhaps Slasher’s most stand-out and unexpected villain, dressed in Victorian-era formal garb and wearing an angular and incredibly jarring Venetian Bauta mask and top hat. Bauta is, ironically, derived from a German word meaning ‘to protect’.
Season 1: An Executioner And The Seven Deadly Sins
Directed by Craig David Wallace and written entirely by creator Aaron Martin, the first season was set in the sleepy town of Waterbury, a town, of course, with a secret past. October 31st, Halloween, 1988, Tom Winston enters the home of Rachel and Bryan Ingram dressed as an imposing executioner. Out of vengeance for betrayal, he brutally murders them both before cutting out Rachel’s unborn baby, Sarah, from her womb and calmly awaiting to be arrested. Flash forward 28 years later and Sarah Bennett returns to Waterbury with her husband to reconnect with her past. However, her presence triggers a series of gruesome biblical deaths based on the seven deadly sins.
Season 2: Hunting Hippies And Hiding Bodies
Slasher: Guilty Party, released in 2017, this time revolved around five main protagonists and the members of a spiritual commune known as We Live As One. Years ago at Camp Motega, five counselors confronted Talvinder Gil about her manipulation and wrongdoings, which after an intense altercation resulted in her death. Her body was hidden and the group never spoke of it again. Years later the group learns that the land will be sold and soon to be built on so they return to the snowy Camp Motega to find Talvinder’s remains and keep their secret safe.
In typical slasher movie fashion it’s not long before the group and residents of the commune become targeted by a mysterious parka-wearing killer reminiscent of Urban Legend‘s antagonist. The Camp Motega Killer’s aesthetic may have been simple but the disturbing part of the costume was that the parka was always glistening wet with the blood of each victim.
Season 3: A New Showrunner And A New Era
2019’s Slasher: Solstice is perhaps where Slasher’s creativity really took off and also marked Ian Carpenter’s first season as showrunner. Returning to a small town setting the show really flipped the script even further and bravely narrowed down its carnage, mostly to the run-down, seedy Clayborne apartment complex filled with a cast of misfits, drug addicts, and racists. Plus, it deals with subjects such as oppression and racial and sexual discrimination.
The story begins with the brutal murder of Kit Jennings, a free-spirited, drug-addicted party boy with a long list of enemies. Exactly one year later his killer, ‘The Druid’, returns to seemingly eliminate the witnesses to Kit’s murder. The season is both visually striking and the bloodiest yet, with wonderful performances and a finale that’s drenched in disturbing bloodshed. The ending interestingly subverted expectations hugely by giving the clichéd racist character redemption, coming out of the murder house a survivor.
Season 4: Patriarchal Terror
One of Slasher’s strengths is creating characters you love to hate and this was none more evident than in season four, Slasher: Flesh & Blood. The season follows the Galloways, a highly dysfunctional and wealthy family gathered for a reunion on a secluded private island. There, their domineering and unhinged father, the ruthless patriarch Spencer Galloway (played by king of body horror David Cronenberg), tells them that he is dying. As such, this year Galloway Games, a long-standing and slightly crazed family tradition, will this time be for his entire fortune and estate. It’s Succession meets Saw.
From here on the family spirals out of control as these abhorrent adults not only compete against one another but try to escape the psychotic grasp of an unknown killer, The Gentleman. It’s a story of betraying your blood that seeps through all the way to the gory conclusion. The utter brilliance of this season was the fact that it wasn’t just the main killer to fear. The true faces of evil were the Galloways themselves, with several of them contributing to the season’s body count.
Season 5: Victorian Villains
And so we come to its latest season, the Victorian-era Toronto-set Slasher: Ripper, unleashed on April 6, 2023. Ripper takes the action and violence back years into the past where the cobbled streets and dark alleys are a new killer’s blood-soaked playground. 12 years previous the mutilated, disemboweled corpse of Margaret Mehar is found on the dirty streets of The Devil’s Elbow. Now, in the present, a sinister, avenging angel has arisen to bring swift, vicious justice to those responsible for Margaret’s death.
Draped in a decorative pitch-black veil making her a ghastly living shadow, The Widow is Slasher’s first killer to be outwardly feminine in appearance and will surely go down as one of its most frightening creations. Season 5 proved once again to be a gripping mystery full of complex, loathsome characters from a range of social classes. Eric McCormack joins the cast as this season’s main antagonist, the tyrannical Basil Garvey, who rules over The Devil’s Elbow and its classes with an iron fist.
During the season hardcore fans will notice there was a decreased amount of gore, with the edit only teasing selected visceral torment, so you are at times left craving a little more. But by the end credits, you’re a little more understanding. This season was less about excessive amounts of blood and more focused on heart and a true story of justice. Slasher once again went against conventional killer showdown rules and subverted expectations with a very emotional and satisfying finale.
Filling Slasher With The Perfect Amount Of Gore
That being said, Slasher does usually live up to its name with each season boasting a copious amount of extravagant blood-shed as well as entertaining and imaginative kills. Antoine’s death by ice auger tearing and churning apart his stomach in a fleshy void of minced bowels and meat or The Druid’s frog dissection of Kaili Greenberg instantly come to mind. It’s the thing Slasher does best and what you tune in for. Whilst Ripper has a habit of cutting away from the best bits, it still boasts stunning cinematography. Dr. Israel’s shocking death at the end of episode 6 was particularly well-filmed, showing glimpses of her paralyzed body and stitched-on corpse parts in perfect angles whilst a haunting score played as a chilling portent of her demise.
Slasher is an anthology series done right and thankfully for horror fans it’s one that is absolutely drenched in gore. But regardless of how many Olympic-sized swimming pools of fake blood are used in production, that’s nothing if there isn’t a decent story to weave between each merciless slash of the killer’s blade. Slasher is luckily highly entertaining, addictive and very engrossing, with a season-long story full of intrigue and often unlike anything you’ve seen before. Slasher truly approaches its story in an unconventional way, often forging something with enough offbeat horror and mystery to please any gore-fiend.
Investigating What Truly Scares Us In The Later Seasons of Slasher
Particularly in later seasons, the show began to delve deeper into where horror can be drawn from, seeing a terrifying, over-the-top tale of crimson vengeance in things that aren’t necessarily already cliches in the genre. A stand-out example would be the setting, as previously mentioned, in Solstice. To have a convincing whodunit set mostly in one building over the course of one day is no small feat. Slasher can at times pull horror from the unexpected, not just in terms of setting but in the way it goes about telling those tales. It’s not just teens at a campground or a simple small town with a secret.
While it may stick to its tried and tested formula, each season still has its own voice and its own atmosphere. Solstice’s neon-bathed hedonistic raving is juxtaposed with its dull old-fashioned main setting. The opulence surrounding Flesh & Blood was shrouded in sombreness and the perpetual battle of egos and loathing added a grim hue to the story. Ripper’s has a sense of doom looming over the characters that’s accentuated by the eerie and spiritual vibes. In short, each season feels like its own movie with its own reasons to watch.
A Stellar Cast No Matter The Season
The cast is of course a huge strength of Slasher with each season having an impressive line-up of potential suspects and victims… mostly victims. There’s very rarely a character who can be considered expendable storywise with each having enough mystique or interest about them.
One of Slasher’s most twisted creations was Flesh & Blood’s Aphra, the adoptive daughter of Seamus Galloway (Christopher Jacot) and Christy Martin (Paula Brancati). Aphra turned out to be a full-fledged psychopath, an adult who conned her way into the family for financial purposes and has pica syndrome, a condition where a person eats non-food items. In Aphra’s case she didn’t mind nibbling on a finger or two. The actress who played her, Nataliya Rodina, made a short appearance as Daisy in Ripper before getting her head split open at the end of the first episode.
Being an anthology series, part of Slasher’s charm is in its brilliant cast of regulars with many having returned for several seasons, mainly Jo Vannicola (all seasons), Jefferson Brown (all seasons), Christopher Jacot (Seasons 1, 2, 4, and 5), and the incomparable Sabrina Grdevich (seasons 1, 4, and 5) and Paula Brancati (all seasons) whose talents for slightly oddball characters know no bounds. It’s always a joy to discover what levels of deranged their characters will reach each season.
Slasher Is Perfect Spooky Season Viewing
Slasher is just one of those shows I bury myself in whenever it’s on. It grips you in its bloodstained hand. You shut out the world and let the dark in. It’s an event. The idea of a show that loves the slasher genre and brings viewers their own viciously gorgeous and brutally twisted take on the much-loved genre is hugely appealing. It’s the kind of show I’ve been waiting for my entire movie-watching life.
Slasher may not be everyone’s cup of tea and if you’re really not into horror then this series will make you vomit into that cup. If you were to wipe away the blood and guts a gripping story would still remain, and if Ripper proved anything it’s that they don’t need to rely on all-out visual disgust to tell a compelling one. Slasher is, put simply, a hyper-smart show that just happens to be splattered with disturbing amounts of gore. It is, quite literally, a cut above the rest.
Categorized:Editorials
