Slasher: The Executioner episode review — 1.1 — An Eye for an Eye
Original air date: March 4, 2016
Director: Craig David Wallace
Writer: Aaron Martin
Rating: 5/10
I really liked the opening here, which is essentially the backstory for the season. In 1988, the masked “Executioner” enters a house and kills a husband and pregnant wife, causing her to give birth as she dies.
It’s disgusting, disturbing, and downright creepy. And almost 30 years later, the surviving daughter, Sarah Bennett (Katie McGrath), moves back into the house with her husband, Dylan (Brandon Jay McLaren), who has come to be editor of the local paper.
They encounter an odd neighbor, befriend some people around the town, and Sarah eventually wants to know more about her parents and why they died. For some reason, she’s able to speak to the man that did it, Tom Winston (Patrick Garrow).
If the character ends up not having anything to do with the killings that take place throughout the season, then I absolutely hate how they depict this character. He’s not remorseful, and he’s trying to get Sarah to look into her parents and see that they were into some weird shit. And weirdly she listens to him and finds some self-made porno tapes in her basement.
She finds out that the man in the tape was the husband of her creepy neighbor, who apparently hasn’t been seen since around the time her parents were killed. And of course, the creepy neighbor just breaks into their house, sees the tapes, and steals them, only to be killed later by somebody in the same mask as the killer from 30 years ago in her own home.
It’s not the strongest opening for an anthology series or miniseries or whatever you want to call this season. The town isn’t particularly well established, even though I get the impression that they’re going to push the “everyone has something to hide” angle.
It’s also downright silly that people would treat the murders from 30 years ago as anything other than random killings, particularly with the killer being uncooperative and unapologetic. It’s weird that Sarah would want to look into things more, or suspect that the new killer would be connected to this guy that’s been locked up for years. Even though there’s a good chance that’s how the story will pan out, this episode doesn’t give us enough of these characters for us to believe that they’d think there’d be this connection.
All that having been said, I liked some things about it. I appreciate the gore. The look of the killer is pretty good, too. There’s plenty to like here, and at the moment, I’m happy to believe that the show will get better.
