10 TV Shows Literally One Step From Perfection
6. Slasher -Tighten Up
Shudder’s anthology series has, in the last few years, created self-contained gory slasher mysteries so solid that they can stand neck and (slashed) neck with the wildly popular (and wildly inconsistent) genre juggernaut American Horror Story.
Whether it’s the first season following Jurassic World’s Katie McGrath through a grisly string of small-town murders, the second’s ski-lodge set spin on I Know What You Did Last Summer, or the third season’s socially conscious horror, the show has shifted between locations and casts while providing both the gore and twisty plotting the subgenre is famous for.
So, what’s it doing on this list? Well, anyone who watched the first season would struggle to justify a late-in-the-season twist which turns the show into a disturbing kidnap drama for one episode, much like fans of season 2 maligned the gratuitous episode lingering on one minor character’s history of assault.
It’s less that the show needs to cut back on the shocking content, which can work if handled sensitively, but more that each season runs an episode or two too long, leaving the writers time to dwell on these needlessly nasty subplots and thus deflating the tension built across the series so far.