If there was one show whose return I was decidedly not excited for, it was Slasher. I couldn’t even review the third season because it was so mind-numbingly bad, just a cavalcade of awful writing, acting, and directing that it left me gobsmacked. To this day I consider season three of Slasher the worst season of any TV show I’ve ever seen, and I reviewed two season of Under the goddamn Dome. My ears perked up a bit when I learned that Shudder had taken over the reins for Slasher, picking up where Netflix (which produced seasons two and three) and Chiller (season one) left off. Maybe Shudder will be the one to finally crack this nut, I thought. After all, American Horror Story is more hit than miss at this point, and the new Creepshow is a lot of fun, so there is definitely room at the table for a hyper-gory anthology like Slasher. Does the not-quite-revamped Slasher: Flesh and Blood make up for the past season’s missteps?
The thing that sets Slasher apart from other horror anthology shows – or just plain horror shows – is that it’s one of the most mean-spirited shows on TV. I have a soft spot in my heart for brutal, nihilistic art that doesn’t care about the viewers’ need for catharsis or resolution. Hell, look at Burn After Reading, maybe the most purely nihilistic piece of mainstream art ever created. Slasher takes things a step further, though, and it doesn’t always work. It’s frustrating to see the fourth season of a show repeating the mistakes of the previous three; one is tempted to lay blame at the feet of showrunner/creator Aaron Martin, who has been at the helm of every season of the show. Where Burn After Reading can take lovable or at least fascinating characters and subject them to the capricious whims of fate and circumstance, Slasher consistently centers around the worst group of people imaginable.
Is that necessarily a bad thing? It’s a mixed bag. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia follows five genuine socio- or psychopaths, but that’s a comedy show, and we’re never supposed to explicitly support or root for them (the same could be said of any of Tim Robinson’s stubborn buffoons in I Think You Should Leave). But Slasher is a horror show, and we need an audience surrogate. Otherwise, it’s just 45 minutes of watching horrible people die horrible deaths, which is why season three left such an awful taste in my mouth. Nearly all the performances in this show are played at a fever pitch, like high school theater kids who need the back of the audience to know that they’re playing the villain. The flip side of this are the saintly characters who the show wants you to root for, but so far the performances, by and large, are so melodramatic as to rob any of the characters of nuance.
“Thicker Than Water” has a strong opening, though, as sibling Seamus and Florence Galloway, along with their stepmother Grace, are locked in a brutal struggle to obtain a gold bar worth almost $200,000. Seamus has a bear trap around his ankle; Florence picks up the gold only to find that it’s electrified. We don’t know what’s going on, and the scene is better for it. Florence’s son Theo arrives, but his brother James is missing. “They took him,” Theo says. And that’s all we get. Unfortunately, it’s more or less downhill from there.
Cut to the present day, where the Galloway family is dutifully returning to their private island for a family reunion, which none of them want to attend. Some dynamics are established; Seamus’s daughter is afflicted with PICA, which compels her to eat foreign objects. She’s also distrustful of Seamus’s wife. Theo is attending the reunion for the first time in five years. No one trusts each other, and as for liking each other, forget about it. When they arrive at the island is when Slasher shows signs of real promise, as is introduces David goddamn Cronenberg as patriarch Spencer Galloway. Cronenberg’s performance is more measured and restrained; even if it seems like he’s doing a riff on Donald Sutherland, it works because of how muted it is compared to everyone else. The writing does him no favors, though; he coldly tells his wife, “I don’t give a fuck about your PC bullshit” as she’s helping him get ready. Still, Cronenberg hasn’t been behind the camera since 2014’s Maps to the Stars and it’s just nice to see him again.
As “Thicker Than Water” establishes family dynamics, the episode falls apart a bit. One of the biggest problems is with Christopher Jacot, who plays Seamus as an utter black hole of charisma. He looks like bargain-bin Jerry O’Connell, which is bad because O’Connell is already incredibly dumb-looking. Seamus seems like a decent father, but he’s boorish, rude, and condescending to everyone else. The other main problem, arguably the biggest, is Sabrina Grdevich as Florence. Grdevich is wildly over the top, and the show doesn’t seem to know what to do with her character. She’s a drunk, a performative ally of her non-binary child, a pretentious artiste, and uncommonly cruel. She tells Theo to his face that she wishes he had been taken instead of James, and blames him for his brother’s kidnapping (even though in a flashback we see that Theo fought both kidnappers; why he doesn’t relay this to his mother is unexplained, but probably due to the fact that Theo sucks). It should come as no surprise that what little we see of James presents us with a little monster, the kind of kid who will pelt his brother with rocks while calling him names. It should be even less surprising that James reappears at the end of this episode.
It’s only a mild twist, considering that the show really wants you to think that James is the masked killer prowling the island. Slasher is an incredibly gory show, and requires a strong stomach even among seasoned viewers of horror fare. It’s unwise to get too attached to anyone, which is how I knew that Merle, the only likable character we’re presented with, was first on the chopping block. He’s hooked and gutted like a fish, which is Slasher‘s way of firing the starting gun. Later, Spencer tries to die via assisted suicide, only to have the killer inject him with some kind of acid. The CGI here isn’t great, but it’s fun to see Cronenberg on the receiving end of some body horror for once.
I’m really hoping this is the season where Slasher gets it right. There are some upsides already: no Salvatore Antonio or Joanne Vannicola (real Slasher heads know); the cinematography is beautiful; the budget seems to have increased, based on some licensed music I heard (namely a track from Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’s score for The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford; and perhaps most surprisingly, a sympathetic performance from Paula Brancati, who in the past has never shied away from playing Slasher‘s more obnoxious characters. The premiere was a mixed bag, but that’s more or less standard for this show. Come on, Slasher. I’m rooting for you.
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