Can David Cronenberg Bring the Scares to ‘Slasher’ Season 4?

The good old slasher isn’t particularly designed for anything beyond 90 minutes of instantly gratifying kills. American Horror Story put off tackling the genre for nearly a decade (eventually succumbing with summer camp tale 1984). Ryan Murphy’s other shorter-lived horror anthology Scream Queens leaned too far into the cartoonish to be even remotely scary. Even the spin-off from post-modern classic Scream struggled to sustain the MTV crowd’s interest in Ghostface’s murderous antics. So you have to take your hat off (or should that be creepy mask) to the straightforwardly-titled Slasher for making it to an unprecedented fourth season. Even more so for the fact it’s bagged one of horror’s most celebrated living auteurs.

However, in perhaps the most unexpected casting news of the year so far, David Cronenberg appears in front of, rather than behind, the camera for Flesh and Blood. The man who practically reinvented body horror with the likes of Scanners, Videodrome and The Fly isn’t entirely new to the whole acting malarkey, of course. He played a doctor impaled by a metal pole in Friday the 13th goes to space, aka Jason X. And his resume is littered with minor parts in straight-to-DVD Canadian thrillers. Spencer Galloway, though, is his most prominent role since the serial killer psychotherapist in Clive Barker’s 1990 adaptation of his own novel Nightbreed.

Cronenberg signed up for the return of Slasher – airing on Shudder having previously moved from the now-defunct Chiller to Netflix – to stretch his acting muscles. As the patriarch of a wealthy family so cutthroat they make the Roys of Succession resemble The Waltons, Galloway is certainly the meatiest character he’s inhabited. He may also be the most sadistic.

Flesh and Blood opens with a family game night, but one where Charades is substituted for a brutal treasure hunt full of hand-burning and leg-skinning boobytraps. Yes, it turns out Galloway enjoys making his wretched clan suffer for their inheritance. This is also the same evening where his rotten young grandson is abducted from his grand island estate, putting pay to such torturous reunions until the 25th anniversary of his disappearance.

It’s here when Galloway decides to resurrect the old tradition of inflicting pain on his nearest and dearest for the ultimate prize: his entire fortune. For he’s now in the final throes of terminal lung cancer and with the help of a jobsworthy medic has devised a contest which will eliminate each money-grabbing offspring one-by-one until his heir apparent has proved their worth.

Galloway doesn’t appear to want to fatally eliminate his gang of spoiled brats (turns out there are limits to his depravity). The participants are only meant to receive massive electric shocks or fall onto a bed of rusty metal spikes when knocked out of the game. Yet they still end up meeting their maker in twisted fashion thanks to a homicidal intruder (or maybe not?) who roams the secluded area in a top hat and white face mask.

It’s an enjoyably ludicrous premise which sits somewhere between Agatha Christie classic And Then There Were None, recent aristocratic horror comedy Ready or Not and mid-‘00s one-season wonder Harper’s Island. The acting, on the other hand, is more daytime soap opera. In fact, the performances may well be the most frightful thing about Flesh and Blood. And that includes its leading man’s.

Cronenberg’s contribution to modern horror as a director is almost unparalleled. But there’s perhaps a reason why his acting work isn’t held in the same regard. He delivers each expository line in such a stilted manner that it’s hard to believe English is his first language. Although to be fair, even Daniel Day-Lewis would struggle to make such on-the-nose dialogue as “I don’t give a f*** about PC bulls***, I care about profits” sound convincing.

Still, his monotonous tones and expressionless manner is in keeping with Galloway’s cold, cold heart. The scene in which he cruelly disowns his newly-born granddaughter, simply because her mother is the ‘lowly’ housekeeper, is particularly unnerving. He’s far from the only culprit, either. Characters react to the garrotting of their loved ones as though it’s a minor inconvenience. Likewise to the array of lifelong family secrets that all unfathomably unravel within the space of a single weekend. And the biggest villains of the piece don’t just chew the scenery, they swallow it whole.

Admittedly, Aaron Martin’s brainchild is built more on hateful people getting an imaginatively grisly comeuppance than Oscar-pedigree performances. And this fourth installment doesn’t disappoint on that front. In just the first four episodes available pre-air, there’s a death-by-woodchipper, a wince-inducing eye gouging and a limb-ripping contraption which would even impress Jigsaw (Cronenberg’s video announcements also seem to owe a nod to the Saw franchise).

Fans will also be pleased to see the return of several regulars including ever-presents Jefferson Brown as an adulterous handyman and Paula Brancati as one of the few Galloways with even a vague moral compass. However, most of the boos and hisses will be aimed toward Christopher Jacot, whose weaselly son Seamus stops at nothing in his quest for gold, and his equally unscrupulous sister Florence, played with bitchy gusto by Sabrina Grdevich. You probably won’t be invested in who’s crowned the last one standing but there’s an undeniable schadenfreude in watching the demise of those who’ve gone before.

“You need to celebrate every time you overcome the world begging you to be kind, to conform, to care,” Galloway tell his youngest Jayden (Corteon Moore) in one of the many flashbacks which attempt to justify all the sociopathy on display (watch out for the dinner table discussion on George Michael’s sexuality in which Jacot and Grdevich make the most unconvincing teens since Grease). It’s a misanthropic ethos which runs through the heart of Flesh and Blood, making it the most prescient chapter so far, and by taking aim at the privilege of the 1%, the most satisfying, too. But we’d still prefer Cronenberg to take the director’s chair for season five.

Jon O’Brien (@jonobrien81) is a freelance entertainment and sports writer from the North West of England. His work has appeared in the likes of Vulture, Esquire, Billboard, Paste, i-D and The Guardian. 

Watch Slasher: Flesh & Blood on Shudder