[TV Review] Slasher: Flesh and Blood

Slasher: Flesh and Blood (2021) is the fourth season of the Slasher series. This season follows a wealthy but dysfunctional family - the Galloways - fighting for their inheritance through a series of deadly games. In a style reminiscent of the Saw franchise, the games are introduced by an absent character, usually on video, and violence is encouraged. As the games progress, family members are murdered in some of the goriest ways imaginable. Is this part of the game, or is someone out to get the family for their own reasons? Accusations fly as those left alive try to identify the masked killer. The season has a familiar whodunit slasher setup - we meet a cast of characters, some more likeable than others, and one by one they begin to meet bloody ends.  Some of the deaths are hard to watch because they are so violent, but some are hard to watch because they are so emotional. With eight episodes in the season, there is enough time to get attached to certain characters, and when they die, the grief is tangible. The kills are excellent for fans of gore. With David Cronenberg’s involvement, playing the patriarch of the Galloway family, we get all the guts and body horror we could expect. There are also some brutal and suspenseful fight scenes in which people end up with fewer body parts than they started with. 

The themes in Flesh and Blood are broadly about different kinds of privilege, and what people can do with their privilege, for better or for worse. For example, the show is not shy about its exploration of race and class. There is a rich, mostly white American family hoarding its wealth, looking down their noses at people with less money. The people of color - some who have joined the family, some who work for the family - are targets of accusations and feel abandoned by the white family around them. Illness is also explored through the story. Assisted suicide is brought up in the very first episode, which raises a variety of emotions and reactions from the characters, many of whom feel that a wealthy person with access to health care should try to survive. Later, an injured character begs for death, to be put out of their misery, and the other characters seem more sympathetic to that desire. As if we can judge someone to be worthy of life by looking at them. It’s a complicated topic, and I was surprised that a Slasher season went there. 

However, Slasher makes some of the mistakes it’s trying to critique with their problematic portrayal of one character, Aphra (Nataliya Rodina). She is a young teenager adopted from Moldova who had a difficult life in her previous orphanage, so she had much less privilege before she was adopted by a wealthy family. She is depicted as having pica, a medical condition in which the person afflicted has urges to swallow non-food items. But her pica is used to make her seem unsettling, eating more and more gruesome items as the show progresses. She is also made creepy by being a voyeur, and grinning while she hides to watch adults have sex. Her accent and her limited English, combined with her behavior, are meant to portray her as “other” and therefore a suspicious character. However, just because someone is adopted from another country and/or has an unfamiliar medical condition that does not automatically make them scary. Slasher: Flesh and Blood has some thoughtful things to say about privilege, but doesn’t completely nail it. 

There are enough twists and turns in the plot for the length of the show, which is well-paced. Each episode is a self-contained rollercoaster, and there is plenty of action in each episode but still room to breathe. And yes, maybe some plot points start to unravel if you question them too deeply, but that’s often the case with slashers, and we can forgive that. While the show uses familiar slasher tropes, there are enough surprises and moments of “didn’t see that coming” that lead to a satisfying end. Check out Slasher: Flesh and Blood available now on Shudder!

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