Brendan Jesus
Slasher: Flesh and Blood is shaping up to be the weirdest and wildest season of the Slasher series. There are many interesting ideas broached by Episode 3 “In Trust.” Most of them work, some of them don’t. Adam MacDonald (Backcountry, Pyewacket) has been doing a really wonderful job with this season, sans a fight scene that makes the fight scene from They Live look Oscar worthy. The family we are blindly inserted into is detestable and ugly. They are just becoming worse people as each episode goes on. Let’s give it a go.
We’re thrust into a scene of Seamus (Christopher Jacot) having a good ole time with a house painter moments before they’re rudely interrupted by Spencer (David Cronenberg). This is the first real time Seamus’s sexuality is revealed, though he and Jayden (Corteon Moore) share a steamy moment in Episode 2, “Sins of the Father,” which really got the gears turning on that revelation. This whole episode is more or less a Seamus episode, for a slew of different reasons. Trying, and succeeding, to make Jayden lose in “Sins of the Father” really made him unlikeable, but you can’t help but really feel for him in “In Trust,” (for the most part).
We cut to real time, and the brutal aftermath of Jayden’s cruel Saw-like death. Seamus longingly looks at his body, so it definitely seems as if Jayden and Seamus either had something going, or they wanted to do something. After leaving the death scene, they swing by Merle’s (Jefferson Brown) looking for his satellite phone, but to no avail. They just head back to the house. Seamus’s darkest moment comes when Liv (Sydney Meyer) drops the bomb on him that he is her father. He offers up the minutest of reactions, and it’s really heartbreaking. Redemption is the key when trying to bring an antagonist over from the dark side, but how much does someone have to do just to cross that threshold? Can the tragedy of a tortured soul outweigh their many flaws?
Birgit (Patrice Goodman) tries comforting Grace (Rachael Crawford) after the loss of Jayden, where they sort of form a pact against this ridiculously greedy family. This was a clever way to increase the tension. Dr. Trinn (Jeananne Goossen) takes a step out for a quick smoke, when Florence (Sabrina Grdevich) Jack Torrences her around with an axe. Florence chases the doctor/game master to a woodchipper, and we’re soon treated to a great woodchipper kill, which is surprisingly underutilized in the genre. This is also a really good insight into the character of Florence, as she shows her true colors: a deplorable unrelenting piece of sh*t who will do anything she can if it means getting one step closer to her father’s inheritance. I’m gonna be pretty pissed if she is the one who wins in the end.
The true power the Galloway family is shown in a flashback when Birgit stoops to their level and laces Grace’s “cold” gazpacho with ipecac, as a sort of hazing move. This all happens moments after Spencer makes fun of Seamus for being a George Michael fan, and pretty much comes out as a homophobe. They do a solid job of talking about homosexuality and all the consequences, good and bad, that come along with it. Chris Jacot does a wonderful job portraying his sexual repression and being sympathetic, then flipping on a dime and being just a complete ass.
Once the family realizes Dr. Trinn is missing they decide to split up and go into the dark woods to find her, toootally a good idea. Vincent (A.J. Simmons) and Liv have a tense encounter in the woods, where he nearly assaults her and vaguely threatens her. Moments later Theo and Birgit find Dr. Trinn’s ground up body, highlighting the insane practical effects of this season. Merle and Jayden’s deaths are brilliant practical SFX pieces, which is a welcome surprise from the majority of genre creations. Theo digs through the chunks of Dr. Trinn and finds a piece of jewelry he gave her.
Everyone reconvenes back at the house, and the news of Dr. Trinn is broken to the family. But wait a second…Vincent is here, where is Liv? Adam MacDonald tries to make Vincent feel alienated, with people even questioning if he is actually Vincent or not. Vincent being home without Liv just adds to that idea. Plus he’s carrying a gun, which isn’t the best look for him.
Florence decides she wants a snack when everyone is asleep and saunters to the kitchen, leading to one of the weirdest and poorly acted fight scenes of all time. It’s boring, terribly edited, and the ADR is just whack. Thankfully the fight is cut short by the sound of the start of game number two—time for a shocking game. The rope game was pretty interesting, but this game is really devious. The contestants have to jump from platform to platform, dodging live wires, hoping they don’t fall onto the electrically charged metal floor.
We’re given one final flashback for the episode, where Spencer watches Seamus and Birgit have sex through a hole in the wall. He watches them for a weirdly long time, and it’s pretty weird. He waits to barge into the room until Seamus finishes, then delivers an incredibly classist line, “In this world there is no us and them, if you give them anything of us they will run with it.” This really solidifies the fact that this family is just completely terrible. After cutting back to present time, Seamus loses the game.
This is when we’re treated to Seamus’s complete 180. O’Keefe (Breton Lalama) and Christy (Paula Brancati) have a deep discussion, where Christy says she doesn’t like the person Seamus’s family turns him into and that money is not important. She just wants a happy life with him and Aphra (Nataliya Rodina). Luckily, Seamus finds the hole in the wall that Spencer used to cu*k himself with, and has the realization that his family turns him into a bad person. With Jacot’s wonderful acting, he portrays through facial expression only that he needs to and is ready to change to become a better person for his wife and child. That’s when he gets a fire place stoker right through the eye! The killer enters the room and shoves the stoker through the wall, and just completely destroys Seamus, leaving us with another example of this show’s wonderful practical effects.
Episode 3. “In Trust,” leaves us empty and heartbroken. We’re bombarded with themes of sexual identity and what comes with that. The creators of the show do a really good job at bringing these ideas to light and creating a discussion about them, without force-feeding anything to us. Needless to say, Slasher: Flesh and Blood will just continue down a dark and demented path, and I’m happy to be along for the ride.
