Slasher Information

Slasher is a Canadian-American television horror anthology series starring Katie McGrath. Produced in association with the Canadian network Super Channel, Slasher is the first original series by U.S. TV channel Chiller, which premiered the series on Friday, March 4, 2016, at 9:00pm EST(UTC-05). 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 fictitional town of Waterbury, was filmed between July and October of 2015 in Sudbury, Parry Sound, and Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario.

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 Slashers 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.

Plot

Slashers 8-episode first season centers around Sarah Bennett, who with husband Dylan moves back to the town of her birth, Waterbury, and into her parents' former home. It was in that house on Halloween Night 1988 where both of her parents, Bryan and Rachel, were horrifically murdered. Rachel was pregnant with Sarah at the time of her murder, with police discovering the killer holding Sarah's newborn body (he excised her from her mother's womb) after the slayings. Sarah's return to Waterbury in the present day is greeted with the start of a series of copycat murders, all appearing to be at the hands of "The Executioner," a figure wearing a medieval-style outfit (leather hood, black robe) identical to one worn by the killer of Sarah's parents.

The Seven Deadly Sins

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 Slashers 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 sin	The Executioner's victim	Episode of death	Background
Wrath	Verna McBride	1	After Sarah discovered the remains of Verna's husband, Peter, in Episode 2, Allison theorizes that Verna killed Peter years earlier after she discovered he and Rachel (Sarah's mother) were making sex tapes.
Gluttony	Justin Faysal	2	Though it was shown that Justin used cocaine prior to his death, Sarah is initially confused as to why he would be punished for gluttony (his ingestion of rat poison is a twist on a glutton's punishment of being forced-fed rats). His widow, Robin, offers Sara some insight in Episode 3: A friend of Justin's knew someone on Waterbury's city council, who rezoned a parcel of lakefront land where the Vicker family had been living. Unable to afford the taxes, the Vickers were forced to sell their land and squat in an abandoned house, where they suffocated in their sleep due to a malfunctioning propane heater. (The Executioner's victim lists and drawings depicting the deadly sins would be discovered in that same house in Episode 7.) Justin would acquire the Vickers' land, on which he and Robin built their dream house.
Envy	Brenda Merrit	3	In 1968, a young Brenda was unable to attend the prom because her 'friend' Ronald (Waterbury's future mayor) got her pregnant. Wanting to hurt friend Sonja, she stood on a bridge over a road on prom night and dropped a cinder block on the car Sonja was driving with her friends. Intending to hit Sonja, the block accidentally hit Brenda's best friend Ada, who wasn't supposed to be with them. The injury sent Ada into a coma she has never awoken from.
Sloth	Trent McBride and June Henry	4	Five years ago, Trent and June were driving their ambulance back to the hospital to sign out of their EMT shift. As they did, they saw Ariel Peterson (Heather's 15-year-old daughter) standing on the side of the road, clearly drunk. Seeking a quick end to their shift (and not wanting to fill out the necessary paperwork had they treated her), Trent and June just made sure Ariel was alright and drove on. It was the night Ariel disappeared.
Greed	Alison Sutherland	5	After pouring her own savings into the Waterbury Bulletin, Alison needed a big story to generate readership, and saw sensational material in Ariel's disappearance: She published in the Bulletin false evidence that Benny Peterson (Heather's husband, who physically beat both his wife and daughter) abducted Ariel, along with juicy messages suggesting he was sexually interested in his daughter. This focused the investigation on Benny instead of other, more productive avenues, which drove Benny to take his own life. When Alison disclosed this to Lisa Ann Follows in Episode 5, she did not express any regrets or thoughts of doing things differently, being content in the fact that the story kept the Bulletin afloat.
Lust	Iain Vaughn	6	Sometime after Trent and June left Ariel on the night of her disappearance, an off-duty Iain picked her up in his car. Telling Ariel she should sober up first, Iain drove past the Peterson home, later pulling to the side and raping Ariel. In the years that followed, Iain kept Ariel as a concubine, imprisoning both her and Jake, the son they conceived together, in a room-sized safe in his basement (a room that, it is suggested, not even Iain's wife had access to).
Pride	Tom Winston	7	Only Tom and Sarah were targeted for their pride of playing God, which they both admit to in Episode 7: Sarah admits she once attempted to take her own life, but Tom's dates back to his time as a priest in Waterbury, when he became infatuated with Rachel Ingram. Rachel wanted to help Tom "clean up the town's sins," but the two became sexually attracted to each other. Rachel's husband, Bryan, intruded on one of her and Tom's interludes, only to reveal that he taped it for a sex video (Alan Henry helped to distribute the videos). Bryan states the moment will be kept between the three of them, but gets Tom to admit his love for Rachel. The anger and heartbreak Tom felt would help formulate his plan to murder both Bryan and Rachel on Halloween Night 1988.

Cast

Main

• Katie McGrath as Sarah Bennett, the main protagonist. An artist, Sarah returns with her husband to Waterbury, where she becomes proprietor of her own art gallery. She has encountered the new "Executioner" several times since her arrival and, with the police not appearing to be of any assistance, 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 (and after Alison Sutherland's death, interim publisher) of the local newspaper, the Waterbury Bulletin. The Bennetts' marriage would be adversely affected by Dylan's own pride as a journalist as well as his not being upfront with her about his previous interest in her parents' deaths.
• Wendy Crewson as Brenda Merrit, Sarah's maternal grandmother, who returns to Waterbury to look after Sarah and Dylan, at least until the killer is found. She is The Executioner's third victim, for the sin of Envy.
• Steve Byers as Cam Henry, a member of Waterbury's police force. Cam grew up with Sarah and was initially welcoming to her upon her return Waterbury, but has become resentful toward Sarah after the murder of his wife, June. It is revealed in the 8th episode that Cam has committed the murders as The Executioner.
• Dean McDermott as Iain Vaughn, Waterbury's police captain and The Executioner's sixth victim, for the sin of Lust.

Recurring

• Jessica Sipos as June Henry, Cam's wife, who works as an EMT and shows jealousy over Cam's relationship to Sarah. She is The Executioner's fifth victim, punished as Trent McBride was before her for the sin of Sloth.
• Mary Walsh as Verna McBride, Sarah and Dylan's neighbor, who passed judgement almost immediately on the two (she warns Sarah, "Your mom was a dirty slut. By the looks of it, so are you."?). She is The Executioner's first victim, punished for the sin of Wrath.
• Enuka Okuma as Lisa Ann Follows, a former criminal justice lawyer, now a New York-based journalist and talk show host. Her interest piqued by the killings, she arrives in Waterbury in Episode 4 to work alongside Allison and Dylan, taking an immediate shine to the latter.
• Erin Karpluk as Heather Peterson. Once a bright and upstanding citizen, Heather has seen Waterbury turn on her, leading Heather to become haggard, withdrawn, and confrontational (she is resentful to Robin and Justin for their renting her family's former drug store space to Sarah for her gallery). 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.
• 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. Tom would reveal to Sarah that he is her biological father. He is The Executioner's eighth victim, willingly sacrificing himself for his sin of Pride.
• Christopher Jacot as Robin Turner, who, after the death of his husband, Justin, must deal with the business mess he left behind. He has also become friends with Sarah, assisting in her investigation into the murders.
• Mayko Nguyen as Alison Sutherland, the publisher of the Waterbury Bulletin and Dylan's boss. Her insistence that the Bulletin take an aggressively sensational tone in its coverage of the murders, including getting any edge to surface a lead (e.g. breaking into June Henry's texts in Episode 5), does not sit well with Dylan. She is The Executioner's sixth victim, for the sin of Greed.
• Rob Stewart as Alan Henry, Cam's father, a church pastor, and the survivor/witness of Sarah's parents' murder (he bears a facial scar from the original Executioner's knife, a reminder of the sinner he once was). He has made occasional visits to Tom Winston in prison to provide religious counsel. It is implied that Alan had at least some knowledge of Cam's murderous behavior and had attempted to seek God's forgiveness for his son.
• Jefferson Brown as Trent McBride, Verna's nephew, June Henry's former EMT partner, and an enthusiastic hunter and taxidermist (he has created cryptozoologic figures from multiple animals). He harbored resentment towards Robin and Justin over a land deal gone bad. He is the fourth victim of The Executioner, the first of two for the sin of Sloth.
• Mark Ghanim as Justin Faysal, who with husband Robin purchased several properties in Waterbury, including the storefront location that serves as Sarah's art gallery. He is The Executioner's second victim, for the sin of Gluttony.
• Dylan Taylor as Bryan Ingram, Sarah's murdered father
• Alysa King as Rachel Ingram, Sarah's murdered mother
• Victoria Snow as Sonja Edwards, Brenda's former childhood friend and her intended victim in a prom night 1968 incident. She is also wife to Ronald Edwards, who, as Brenda tells Sarah in Episode 3, impregnated Brenda in 1968 and is Sarah's grandfather, news that Sonja doubts after Sarah discloses it to her.
• Sabrina Grdevich as Unknown
• Rainbow Sun Francks as Unknown
• Hannah Endicott-Douglas as Ariel Peterson, Heather's missing daughter, whose rape and imprisonment by Iain Vaughn resulted in her giving birth to his son, Jake.
• Shawn Ahmed as Sharma, an officer in Waterbury's police force
• Booth Savage as Ronald Edwards, Waterbury's mayor
• Susannah Hoffman as Marjorie Travers, a prostitute and drug addict who teamed with Iain Vaughn to give a false claim about seeing Ariel before her disappearance.

Episodes

|Viewers         = 0.120
|ShortSummary    = Sarah and Dylan move to Waterbury and into the former home (and murder site) of her parents.  The new "Executioner" surfaces for the first time, chasing Sarah down her street before beating a teen boy who had been destroying mailboxes with his baseball bat (the boy resurfaces in the woods at the beginning of Episode 2).  Following a suggestion from Tom Winston after their first meeting, Sarah discovers a camcorder and illicit sex tapes her parents buried in their house, tapes that Verna (who has treated Sarah and Dylan rudely since their arrival) discovers and takes to her house after snooping around.  The Executioner ties down and dismembers Verna in her bedroom (punishment for the sin of anger).  Sarah discovers Verna's body, only to fall down the stairs and lose consciousness while trying to escape The Executioner, who leaves one sex tape beside her.  While recovering in hospital, Sarah claims she saw The Executioner, which Dylan and Chief Vaughn doubt.

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|ShortSummary    = Brenda arrives at the Bennett's home, suitcase in hand.  Robin is confronted by Trent, while Sarah is confronted by Heather.  Sarah receives a package containing a severed human finger and a note; following Tom's suggestion that the note contains geographic coordinates, Sarah discovers the remains of Verna McBride's husband, Peter, in a nearby wooded area.  Lured out into an alley way by a severed power cable, Robin's arms are slashed by The Executioner, with a bystander rescuing Robin.  While Robin recovers in hospital, another outage occurs, after which Robin receives flowers and a card of condolence.  Believing Justin is in danger, Robin and Cam frantically try to call Justin, but it is too late:  While hosting a charity party at his home, Justin dies after collapsing and frothing at the mouth (his ingestion of rat poisoning serving as punishment for gluttony).  After she had previously threatened Justin and Robin, A fitful Heather is arrested by the police.
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|Viewers         = 0.067
|ShortSummary    = Robin, deep in grief over Justin and deep in the business mess he left behind, deals with Trent's anger over Justin giving him a bad check.  After The Executioner breaks into her home, a shaken Sarah heads out of town town with Brenda for a while (Dylan stays behind in Waterbury).  After swerving off the road to avoid a mysterious truck, Sarah and Brenda become separated in the woods.  Brenda, who had just admitted to Sarah her role in Ada's accident (depicted in this episode's cold open), is kidnapped by The Executioner, who ties her to a block and tosses it into the lake at a nearby boathouse.  Brenda's drowning death (punishment for envy) prompts the police to release Heather from custody after they had arrested her as a suspect in Verna's and Justin's deaths (Sarah earlier had doubts about Heather's culpability).

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|Viewers         = 0.067
|ShortSummary    = The police verify that the truck that ran off Sarah and Brenda belonged to Trent, but he is The Executioner's next victim, chased into a pit in the woods and eaten by snakes (punishment for sloth).  Following a passing suggestion Lisa Ann Follows made to he and Allison, Dylan interviews Tom in prison for the Bulletin, hair strands from Sarah's brush in hand. (Tom later presents Sarah's hair to Alan Henry and asks him to do an unspecified favor.)  Tom produces evidence to Dylan that suggests he has had a greater interest in Tom than he let on to Sarah.  Apologetic for drunkenly claiming Sarah is in love with Cam, June confides to Sarah that she and Trent had an affair while they were EMT partners; she also tells Sarah (and later tells Cam and Vaughn) about Trent's encounter with Ariel Peterson.  Security camera footage reveals a detail June left out: She was with Trent in his ambulance that night.  After comforting a hysteric Heather (who had just delivered a fire-and-brimstone speech to onlookers in the middle of the street), June heads to church to pray for Ariel's return; there, The Executioner abducts her.  As the episode ends, June awakens in a cornfield naked, attached to an IV, and covered in honey... with a rat approaching her.
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|Viewers         = 0.053
|ShortSummary    = June's rotted remains are discovered, her punishment for sloth complete. (The IV bag contained a paralytic.)  Cam and Sarah argue over suspicions each other have about the killer; Alan learns about the argument and advises Sarah to be careful.  Sarah and Robin discover a "murder kit" in Alan's church office, later discovering Alan needs the contents for a BDSM session.  Sarah discovers her parents' sex videos feature a young Tom Winston.  Uncomfortable when discussing the murders on Lisa Ann's show, Alison asks The Executioner on-air for an interview.  The Executioner obliges and, in full costume, speaks with Alison (and her cameras) at an abandoned foundry, verifying their role in June's death and noting that the Bulletin is as much a judge/jury as they are.  Alison confides to Lisa Ann that she fabricated evidence in the Bulletin that tied Benny Peterson to his daughter's disappearance; unbeknownst to them, Dylan is listening to their conversation.  Heading to New York to appear on Lisa Ann's show, Alison gets into a courtesy limo... driven by the Executioner, who takes her back to the foundry and, despite her cries of repentance, slashes her throat; her head is later found in a restaurant's deep fryer (punishment for greed).  Fending off Dylan's questions about Alison's whereabouts, Vaughn heads home to his basement, where he opens a room-sized safe; inside, a young boy is being sung to by Ariel Peterson.
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|Viewers         = 0.076
|ShortSummary    = The cold open depicts Iain Vaughn's abduction and rape of Ariel 5 years ago; in the present day, he prevents an attempt by Ariel and son Jake to escape his basement.   Sarah becomes suspicious about Dylan's whereabouts when Alison was killed.  Tom insists to Sarah that he is her father (a DNA test was the reason for her hair); dismissing it at first, she later tells him that she can accept it... but wants to know why he killed her parents.  After Sarah and Cam tell him their suspicions about Marjorie Travers' claim of seeing Ariel the night she disappeared, Vaughn and Marjorie meet to square away their story; he gives Marjorie a heroin needle (obtained from police evidence), which she fatally overdoses on.  Realizing Sarah is suspicious about Marjorie's death, Vaughn takes Sarah to a junkyard and attempts to make it appear as if The Executioner punished Sarah for the sin of pride (Sarah manages to escape).  Knowing his sin is lust, Vaughn makes an aborted attempt to punish himself (along with Ariel and Jake).  With the police demanding Vaughn's whereabouts, Sarah encourages his wife, Nancy, to let them into their basement, from which only Ariel and Jake exit (an emotional mother-daughter reunion between Heather and Ariel follows).  Vaughn escapes to a secluded lakeside shack, where The Executioner knocks him out; he later awakens to witness his punishment: Being burned alive in a crematorium.
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|Viewers         = 
|ShortSummary    = A reprise of the Episode 1 flashback to Bryan and Rachel Ingram's murders reveals a new detail: Before killing her, Tom reveals himself to Rachel; she responds by professing her love for him and pleads for their baby's life.  Sharma and Cam discover The Executioner's list of "sinners," which include Tom's and Sarah's names for "Pride."  Sarah becomes angry at Dylan after discovering his website dedicated to her parents' murders.  Lisa Ann upsets Dylan with her knowledge that Tom and Sarah are targets, but mollifies him with news that she got his request for a book deal approved "? and an intimate moment.  While heading back to prison from hospital (he was beaten by a fellow inmate in Episode 6), Tom escapes to Sarah's house; Sarah willingly escapes with him to the woods "? where The Executioner captures them both.  With Sarah tied to a buzzsaw (after she admits her sin of pride), Tom reveals (through a new flashback) how his own ego and pride led him to murder Bryan and Rachel.  Tom successfully demands that The Executioner punish him instead of Sarah, and he willingly dives onto the running buzzsaw (being "broken on a wheel").  The discovery of The Executioner's outfit on display in a park only convinces Sarah that The Executioner is not done yet.  At his house (where Alan tells him that Waterbury has been cleansed), Cam adds a bloody piece of Tom's prison jumpsuit to a hidden box of murder mementos.
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|DirectedBy      = Craig David Wallace
|WrittenBy       = Aaron Martin
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|ShortSummary    = After a cold open flashback depicts the 1996 death of Cam's mother (he pushed her down the stairs), the story picks up on Halloween eve:  Alan finds Cam's box of murder mementos, but is strangled by Cam while praying for his son.  Cam plants the mementos in the Bennetts' house and, after Sarah discovers them, arrests Dylan (his attorney would get Dylan out of custody later).  Cam comforts Sarah (who's still upset over Dylan's dishonesty in Episode 7), and the two have a sexual interlude.  Browsing through a summer camp scrapbook, Sarah discovers a sketch Cam drew that resembles The Executioner's drawings; her new suspicions that Cam is The Executioner are confirmed when she sneaks into Cam's house and discovers Alan's remains and a bloody knife.  Sarah takes the knife and, after luring him out of Robin's Halloween party, stabs Cam, who takes that same knife and stabs both Sarah and bystander Robin.  Sarah escapes to her house, but Cam pursues her, barges through the front door, and stabs Sarah again.  Sarah (with a reluctant Dylan heeding her pleas for assistance) turns the tables, however, stabbing Cam several times and slitting his throat "? punishment for The Executioner.  Four weeks later, in the epilogue, a reconciled Sarah and Dylan leave Waterbury, with Robin showing their former house to two prospective buyers... and their young daughter, who snaps the neck of a stray cat in the yard.
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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 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 Slashers 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 Slashers 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 Ghanim's first day on set, when his character, Justin Faysal, was laid out in a casket for a scene early in Slashers third episode (Justin's death, which took place in Episode 2, would be filmed later on).

Reception

Slasher has received positive reviews, including from the following:

• 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 Slashers Super Channel premiere, The Globe and Mails 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.