You can’t choose your family. But you can kill them.
SLASHER: FLESH & BLOOD
2021/367m
Director: Adam MacDonald / Created by: Aaron Martin / Cast: Rachael Crawford, Sabrina Grdevich, Chris Jacot, Paula Brancati, Alex Ozerov, AJ Simmons, Sydney Meyer, Breton Lalama, Corteon Moore, Jeananne Goossen, Patrice Goodman, Nataliya Rodina, David Cronenberg.
Body Count: 15
Laughter Lines: “A series of games – a competition – each of you will be knocked out one by one.”
Saw meets Succession for the fourth series of the Canadian anthology universe where the only people who exist are hateful narcissists. Seriously, Aaron Martin, would it hurt to make a few of them not assholes? I thought residents of Canada had form for being too nice.
Patriarch of the Galloway family, David Cronenberg, decides to opt out of life – literally. He’s committing assisted suicide, but not before instructing his greedy family that only one of them can have his fortune, and to win it they just have to play a few games. Last one standing wins gazillions. So they gather at his island mansion for the weekend where they argue, deceive, and are hunted down by a top-hat-and-plague-masked killer who has some creative demises in store.
Add to this, kidnapped grandson Vincent reappears after 25 years, igniting more suspicion. His uneasy twin, Theo, has the hots for the housekeeper’s daughter, Liv, who is timely informed that she’s actually part of the bloodline and thus eligible for the prize. Closet gay Seamus and his happy-hippie wife Christy are struggling with their weird adopted daughter, Aphra. New trophy wife of the head of the clan, Grace, just wants the best for their son, Jayden. Non-binary O’Keeffe doesn’t really want to be there.
And then there’s Florence. To conjure up an image of Florence, think of the campest, most pantomime witch character you can, squawky shrill voice right out of The Wizard of Oz included. Amplify that a hundred or so times, and you might have her. A role so beyond the realms of credibility, it’s no wonder Sabrina Grdevich goes to town, chewing up the scenery with her demented antics, kind of like an evil Moira Rose, just falling shy of threatening: “I’ll get you, and your little dog too!”
So it goes, the loser of each test is eliminated by the agile killer, and sometimes one another in a Bay of Blood-esque desperation for survival and riches, while the blackest of black secrets are revealed through flashbacks, painting just about everyone as the nastiest kind of nasty. Perhaps only Christy and O’Keeffe are likeable by comparison, but meet sticky ends nonetheless. Gruesome denouements include being fed into a giant woodchipper, limbs ripped off, acid injection, and one poor person has their face eaten. A decent midpoint twist right out of Orphan and the killer’s identity being an unexpected outcome do little to swim against the tide.
I don’t understand this series; it seems firmly rooted in the sport of horrible people being killed horribly for horrible reasons. There’s nobody to root for. But will I watch the next season? Probs.
Blurbs-of-interest: Cast members Jacot and Brancati were in the previous three seasons; Patrice Goodman was in Solstice; Alex Ozerov was in The Dark Stranger; Corteon Moore was in the Terror Train remake; David Cronenberg had a cameo in Jason X.