Slasher Season 1 (2016)

An anthology series featuring rampaging serial killers leaving carnage in their wake as their next victims fight to stay alive.

Review

But for one minor issue, 2016's Slasher is pretty damn good at what it does. Season 1 of the show is entitled The Executioner, and is a stand alone eight part horror story - each of the parts running around the 50 minute mark. It makes for a long single story, in what amounts to nothing more, or less, than a stock horror film.

With protagonist Sarah moving back to the old family home (in which her parents were murdered some thirty years prior - for which the killer was caught) the story begins with the killings starting up again. It has a relative play-by-play feel to the story, with a standard whodunnit, and why in the mix, however given the runtime both characters and story get a vast amount of development. Written by Aaron Martin (Degrassi: The Next Generation) the pacing and plot is slick. There is very little lull in the story, and for the most part is thrashes past at a great rate. Director Craig David Wallace (Todd and the Book of Pure Evil) does a pretty solid job, too.

The cast is mixed, some are outstanding, others more generic - standouts for us were Patrick Garrow as the killer of Sarah's parents, Tom Winston, and Mary Walsh as the batshit woman next door, Verna McBride.

Obviously it's horror - and it does a neat job of it. The scares are there, dropping the jump scares and concentrating on creeping dread for the most part, and yes, it's plenty gory, with some decent kills.

Overall it's very well done and cleverly written - there were a couple of plot threads that didn't seem to hold together but that is understandable with a show with such complexities at it's heart. But there is that minor issue. It's hard to explain without spoiling much, but we felt that the show ran for one too many episodes - almost as if Aaron Martin wrote the perfect ending and was then instructed to close all open plots by whatever means necessary. The final episode is mostly a little meh, and the near one hour of 'extra' story unmerited, and the closure of the series feeling a little cheapened. I would advise stopping at the climax of episode 7 for maximum impact.

Worth seeing for a good runtime of decent horror.