Slasher is a Canadian television horror anthology series created by Aaron Martin.
The first season, retroactively subtitled The Executioner, was produced in association with the Canadian network Super Channel, Slasher was the first original series by U.S. TV channel Chiller, which premiered the series on Friday, March 4, 2016, at 9:00 pm EST. Super Channel aired the show's Canadian premiere on April 1, 2016. The series first season, which centered on a mysterious figure billed as "The Executioner" terrorizing the fictional town of Waterbury, Canada, was filmed between July and October 2015 in Sudbury, Parry Sound, and Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario.
On May 1, 2017, Slasher began filming a second season in Orangeville, Ontario, Canada. The licensing rights for the second season was acquired by Netflix. The season was released as a "Netflix Original" title in various countries on October 17, 2017. The second season titled Slasher: Guilty Party is centered on a group of former summer camp counselors who return to an isolated campground in order to bury their sins of the past, before being targeted, one by one, by an unknown killer.
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Background
Slasher employs a season-long anthology format, with an overarching mystery storyline that will be resolved upon the season's conclusion. Aaron Martin, the series' creator/producer, acknowledged gaining inspiration for the format from American Horror Story, stating that, should Slasher have subsequent seasons, the AHS style of self-contained storylines would be used along with, ideally, the reliance on as many actors from previous seasons as possible to portray brand new roles.
Martin aims to tell "a modern-day monster story" in Slasher, combining three of his favorite genres: The contemporary murder mystery (a la Broadchurch), the works of Agatha Christie (one of Martin's favorite crime writers), and the classic slasher films he grew up with. In terms of the latter, Martin has specifically cited the influences of Halloween and It Follows in Slasher's use of a mysterious singular embodiment that is responsible for a series of killings. Not wanting to have the show's killer be "a mythological creature" (as he feels the killers in most slasher films do not have much mystery surrounding them), Martin also uses elements of the traditional whodunit in Slasher: The show's characters, many of whom have mysterious backgrounds -- and their own reasons for possibly being the killer -- are featured, explored, and eliminated from consideration, one by one (either through death or the natural deductive process), until the "all too human" killer and their motivations for their actions are revealed.
Maps Slasher (TV series)
Plot
Season 1: The Executioner (2016)
Slasher's 8-episode first season centers around Sarah Bennett who, with husband Dylan, moves back to the town of her birth, Waterbury (a fictional town in Canada), and into her parents' former home. It was in that house on Halloween Night 1988 where both of her parents, Bryan and Rachel, were murdered. Rachel was pregnant with Sarah at the time of her murder, with police discovering the killer holding Rachel's newborn baby after the slayings. Sarah's return to Waterbury is greeted with the start of a series of copycat murders, all appearing to be at the hands of "The Executioner".
Seeking insight on her sightings of "The Executioner" and the slayings he or she has committed, Sarah has paid visits to her parents' imprisoned murderer, Tom Winston. Tom suggests to Sarah that though most of Waterbury's residents project a veneer of friendship, innocence, and self-righteousness, many of them harbor dark secrets, including her late parents. During these conversations, Tom expresses thoughts on what is a common theme of Slasher's first season -- the seven deadly sins. Gaining information from Sarah on the victims' backgrounds and the nature of their deaths, Tom provides suggestions as to what sin the victims may have violated; Sarah would begin to employ this approach herself without Tom's assistance in later episodes.
Just as Tom declared himself "the Lord's messenger" in a 1988 police interrogation video after murdering Sarah's parents (seen in Episode 1), he believes in the present day that the new Executioner has become a self-appointed deliverer of "Biblical" punishment towards those he or she believes have committed one of the seven deadly sins in their past, employing methods that are apropos to the individual natures of the deadly sins. Future victim Alison Sutherland would get The Executioner to admit this in their Episode 5 interview: Alison asks why The Executioner would be as much a sinner as everyone else and violate one of God's commandments to not kill; The Executioner counters that God only commanded not to murder the innocent, and that his/her victims are not innocent. Tom has suggested to Sarah, in Episode 3, that The Executioner him/herself has committed a deadly sin of their own, being blinded by pride ("the greatest of sins").
The police chief is found harboring Ariel, a missing teenager that he kidnapped, and a child they had together, in a enclosed locked room in his basement. Sarah's grandmother accidentally put her best friend in a coma by dropping a cinder block on her head (in fact, she was aiming for the girl sitting next to her best friend; the boy who had gotten Sarah's grandmother pregnant as a teenager was taking this girl to their high school prom). Bryan and Rachel (Sarah's parents) were cuckolding multiple men and video taping them into service to support them, including Tom Winston. Tom decided to kill Bryan and Rachel after falling in love with Rachel and being blackmailed, but saved Sarah after Rachel told him Sarah was actually his and not her husband's.
Eventually, it's revealed that the deputy Cam is the Executioner, suffering under an abusive mother whom he pushed down the stairs, killing her. Cam's father, the town priest, discovered that Cam was the Executioner, and Cam killed him as well. After finding her father's body parts in his home, Sarah kills Cam with a machete.
Season 2: Guilty Party (2017)
Slasher's 8-episode second season centers around a horrific secret that a group of former summer camp counselors have buried long ago. Due to a changing circumstance, they must return to their resort in the dead of winter to retrieve the body of Talvinder, whom they murdered while they were camp counsellors, five years earlier. They get surprised when they can't find the body at the campsite. Later, the group start dying one by one at the hands of a mysterious person wearing a parka, which also alerts the second group of counselors at the resort.
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Eventually, it's revealed that Judith is the killer, and another character, Wren, is actually Owen "Wren" Turnbull, her son who committed suicide after being framed for Talvinder's murder, and is a figment of Judith's imagination. Owen wrote a letter to his mother, asking her to get justice for him before hanging himself. Judith killed several members of the commune for their complicity after the fact, as Antoine discovered Talvinder's body and hid it to avoid jeopardizing a real estate deal. Dawn and Keira are the only ones to escape her wrath and the former finally turns herself in for her crime during the epilogue. Judith can be seen watching them along with the hallucination of Owen, who says they'll be waiting for Dawn after she is released from prison.
Cast and characters
Recurring cast members
Season 1: The Executioner
Main
- Katie McGrath as Sarah Bennett. An artist, Sarah returns with her husband to Waterbury, where she becomes proprietor of her own art gallery. She sets out to find how and why the slayings are occurring. Creator Aaron Martin has described Sarah as more of a Nancy Drew type than that of a classic "final girl" commonly found in horror films.
- Brandon Jay McLaren as Dylan Bennett, Sarah's husband and editor-in-chief of the local newspaper, the Waterbury Bulletin.
- Steve Byers as Cam Henry, a member of Waterbury's police force.
- Patrick Garrow as Tom Winston, the original Executioner who murdered Sarah's parents in 1988 and who advises Sarah on the new Executioner's murders in the present day.
- Dean McDermott as Iain Vaughn, Waterbury's police chief.
- Christopher Jacot as Robin Turner, who, after the death of his husband, Justin, must deal with the business mess he left behind.
- Wendy Crewson as Brenda Merrit, Sarah's maternal grandmother, who returns to Waterbury to look after Sarah and Dylan.
Recurring
- Jessica Sipos as June Henry, Cam's wife, who works as an EMT and shows jealousy over Cam's relationship to Sarah.
- Mary Walsh as Verna McBride, Sarah and Dylan's neighbor, who passed judgement almost immediately on the two.
- Enuka Okuma as Lisa Ann Follows, a former criminal justice lawyer, now a New York-based journalist and talk show host.
- Erin Karpluk as Heather Peterson. She is deeply haunted by and obsessed with her daughter Ariel's disappearance, which occurred 5 years before the show begins. Karpluk has equated Heather to the Log Lady, in that much like the Twin Peaks character, Heather appears to have a sixth sense about Waterbury's residents and their dark secrets.
- Mayko Nguyen as Alison Sutherland, the publisher of the Waterbury Bulletin and Dylan's boss.
- Rob Stewart as Alan Henry, Cam's father, a church pastor, and the survivor/witness of Sarah's parents' murder. He has made occasional visits to Tom Winston in prison to provide religious counsel.
- Jefferson Brown as Trent McBride, Verna's nephew, June Henry's former EMT partner, and an enthusiastic hunter and taxidermist.
- Mark Ghanimé as Justin Faysal, who with husband Robin purchased several properties in Waterbury, including the storefront location that serves as Sarah's art gallery.
- Dylan Taylor as Bryan Ingram, Sarah's father
- Alysa King as Rachel Ingram, Sarah's mother
- Victoria Snow as Sonja Edwards, Brenda's former childhood friend and her intended victim in a prom night 1968 incident.
- Hannah Endicott-Douglas as Ariel Peterson, Heather's missing daughter
- Shawn Ahmed as Sharma, an officer in Waterbury's police force
- Booth Savage as Ronald Edwards, the Mayor of Waterbury
- Susannah Hoffman as Marjorie Travers, a prostitute and drug addict
Season 2: Guilty Party
Main
- Leslie Hope as Judith Berry
- Lovell Adams-Gray as Peter Broome
- Jim Watson as Noah Jenkins
- Paula Brancati as Dawn Duguin
- Christopher Jacot as Antoine
- Paulino Nunes as Mark Rankin
- Ty Olsson as Glenn Morgan / Benny Ironside: A former prisoner. A year ago, Benny was serving time in prison when he met a new inmate with whom he entered into a romantic relationship. The inmate is released 6 months later, and 2 months prior to the present, Benny reunites with him as he is camping in Tamarind Bluffs. When the inmate announces he plans on joining a commune, Benny volunteers to come along, but the inmate eventually snaps on the journey and demands he leaves, believing he can't start a new life if he's constantly being reminded of his time in jail. When Benny tries to kiss him and re-affirm their relationship, the inmate angers him by saying he doesn't want to be with him anymore and Benny kills him in a fit of rage. He joins the commune under the inmate's, Glen Morgan, identity. After he kidnaps and rapes Noah, Noah managed to fight back by setting the school bus on fire and driving him out. Benny then returns to the commune and attempts to kill Renee and Judith, but he is shot and incapacitated by Renee. He is tortured for answers regarding the killer, but admits only to Glen's death until falsely admitting he killed Antoine to end the torture, so Renee slits his throat.
- Joanne Vannicola as Renée
- Sebastian Pigott as Owen "Wren" Turnbull
- Madison Cheeatow as Keira
Recurring
- Melinda Shankar as Talvinder Gill: A new camp counselor whose murder drives the events of Guilty Party. A manipulative girl, she played on the other counselors kindness, setting up Susan as a destructive hater and having sex with Peter. A summer outing for her and five other counselors turns out to be a trap, as the other five have arranged for her to stand 'trial' for her actions. The trial goes wrong, however, leading the other campers to believe she is dead only to regain consciousness as her body is about to be hidden. Faced with the possibility of being arrested for her assault, the group argues about what to do with her until Andi snaps and kills her with a rock. 5 years later, the counselors have to return to retrieve and destroy her body as a resort is going to be built and the construction might unearth it. However, despite her death and the hiding of her body resulting in multiple murders, the killer is not doing it because they are avenging Talvinder's death.
- Kaitlyn Leeb as Susan Lam: A mother and wife, once Andi and Dawn's friend. 5 years ago, when Talvinder was the newest camp counselor, she was distrustful of her, believing her to be a bad person. After rejecting her attempt at seduction and telling her that she saw right through her, Talvinder trashed the camp carnival booth they had been working on and accused Susan of doing it, setting Dawn against her. Angry, Susan showed Andi that Talvinder was a faker by taking her to where she and Peter were having sex in the woods, promising the distraught Andi that she would figure out a way to make Talvinder pay. She was the one to come up with the trial idea that went bad when Talvinder was hurt and thought to be dead, panicking when Talvinder was found to be dead and she ran away, claiming no wrong doing occurred. After the counselor group is discovered to have access to a gun and separated from the commune group, she leaves the cabin and is caught by the killer, her eyes gouged out with a broken pipe and her neck snapped.
- Rebecca Liddiard as Andi Criss: Peter's ex-girlfriend. 5 years ago, when Talvinder was the newest camp counselor, Peter cheated on Andi with Talvinder. When the attempt to scare Talvinder went wrong and she was severely injured, while the other counselors were arguing what to do with her, Talvinder called out to Peter that she loved him, angering Andi and causing her to pick up a rock and kill Talvinder. In the present, she argues with Peter about going to the police and after talking with Mark, decides to return to the rocks where Talivinder's body disappeared, only to see her skeletal corpse hanging from the trees and get knocked out. She is tied to the ground by stakes and her throat is sliced open, bleeding out onto the snow.
- Dean McDermott as Alan Haight
- Jefferson Brown as Gene: The outfitter and supply deliverer for the commune. He drives the former counselors up to the commune, and becomes suspicious of their desire to visit the former camp in the dead of winter, deciding to stay over the weekend to keep an eye on the newcomers. He is the first to die in the present, as when he decides to visit the communes sauna, he is surprised by a person in a concealing parka and sliced from his stomach downward with a chainsaw.
- Kyle Buchanan as Simon
- Simu Liu as Luke: Susan's kind and somewhat oblivious husband. He truly loves his wife, but fails to notice her stress about interacting with her old counselor friends, once two years prior when Andi approached on the street and in the present when she is hesitating to go up to the commune.
- Sophia Walker as Megan: An unlucky hiker. Going on a trek she typically took with a friend who passed away in memoriam of her, she came to the commune to seek shelter when a blizzard is expected. Renee, hardened by the loss of Antoine, is immediately suspicious of her and refuses to listen to reason, striking her with a statue and giving her a concussion. After she learns of the situation at hand, she agrees to attempt a hike down the mountain to the road for help, but only if the blizzard is over by morning. However, that night she suffers a psychotic break, wildly hallucinating and vomiting before falling down the stairs and dying from a broken neck, the cause of which is revealed to be toxic berries in her soup bowl.
- Kimberly-Sue Murray as Janice
Episodes
Season 1: The Executioner (2016)
Season 2: Guilty Party (2017)
Development and production
Aaron Martin was inspired to write Slasher after his work on the first season of the medical series Saving Hope, including his writing of two Hope episodes where, in his words, "people got chopped up." Martin would write the first episode of Slasher as a spec script, with two intentions for doing so: To offer it to prospective studios, and to show a writing style that was different from his previous work (e.g. Saving Hope, Degrassi: The Next Generation, Being Erica). Though the script did not receive immediate interest, Shaftesbury Films would discover and option it to prospective broadcasters. The script would land at Canadian premium network Super Channel, who, their interest piqued in part by Slasher's fixed-end format, would order it as a series. The American network Chiller, which specializes in the horror/thriller genre, would join in production sometime after Super Channel; Slasher would be Chiller's first foray into original scripted series content.
Production on Slasher's 8-episode first season was announced on July 28, 2015, with filming taking place between then and October 2015. Three Northern Ontario municipalities -- the cities of Sudbury and Sault Ste. Marie and the town of Parry Sound -- would stand in for the show's fictitious location, the town of Waterbury. A first trailer for the series would be released on November 26, 2015.
Unlike most TV series that film their episodes in order, Slasher, under the direction of Craig David Wallace, was shot as if it were a "super-sized" movie: Scenes from multiple episodes were shot at the same time, with the availability of locations and cast being factored in. The out-of-order schedule allowed the actors to know of their characters' fates, especially those who had to film their death scenes one day but return later to film earlier scenes as necessary. As an example of this, Martin cited Mark Ghanimé's first day on set, when his character, Justin Faysal, was laid out in a casket for a scene early in Slasher's third episode (Justin's death, which took place in Episode 2, would be filmed later on).
On May 1, 2017, Slasher began filming a second season in Orangeville, Ontario, Canada. Shaftesbury Films confirmed that the series will not be returning to Super Channel or Chiller for a second season. However, Netflix acquired the rights to the second season. The second season was released via Netflix on October 17, 2017.
Reception
Slasher has received positive reviews. Zap2it called the series "a whole lot of fun" and "something for everyone," praising the series' anthology nature, its cast of characters, storyline, plot twists, bloody violence, and even the series-within-the-series Falcon Husbandry (shown as a favorite of Robin and Justin's in Episode 2). Bloody Disgusting awarded the show four skulls out of five, praising Katie McGrath as a great "protagonist and possible final girl" and the series' decision to feature an adult cast, rather than teenagers, with well-developed characters and a "decidedly classic" presentation. On the occasion of Slasher's Super Channel premiere, The Globe and Mail's John Doyle, while remarking that it "is no masterpiece of horror, nor was it meant to be," called the show "very well-crafted," praising its "exceptional cast" and tight pacing, and noting fans of gory horror will appreciate its bloody scenes.
Awards and accolades
International broadcast
On May 25, 2016, the entire first season of Slasher became available to stream instantly on Netflix US. On October 17, 2017, the full second season of Slasher became available to stream on Netflix in various countries.
References
External links
- Official website
- Slasher on IMDb
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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