Netflix’s Slasher
Season 3, Episode 1: “6am to 9am”
Directed by Adam MacDonald
Written by Aaron Martin

* For a recap & review of Season 2 Guilty Party, click here.
* For a recap & review of the next episode, “9 am to 12 pm” – click here
We open on a rave, filled with people dressed in solstice imagery. People are passing around the love and drugs freely. A guy— Kit Jennings (Robert Cormier)— wearing ram’s horns wanders home after it’s over. He stumbles, laughing to himself. He notices someone wearing a hooded costume, like a druid, and a neon-lit mask like one from The Purge series. He just laughs more and keeps heading home.

Except the Druid follows and pulls a knife, rushing at Kit, stabbing him brutally. Kit calls for help, bleeding everywhere. People hear. Lights come on in the building nearby. Someone’s cellphone captures an image of Kit. He makes it inside. He screams for help, smearing blood on the walls and doors.
He knocks on Cassidy Olensky’s (Genevieve DeGraves) door. She doesn’t want to let him back inside. She notices he’s bleeding right as the Druid reappears to stab some more. Another man in the building refuses to help, too— Dan (Dean McDermott), Cassidy’s dad. The Druid passes him by for his initial victim. Kit ends up outside again and gets run down by Amy Chao (Rosie Simon) accidentally. Everybody files into the street.
But Kit dies in the road before any help can arrive.
Jump to one year later.
We meet Violet Dimashke (Paula Brancati), a vlogger, currently promoting an açaí bowl she loooooves to eat. We see Saadia Jalalzai (Baraka Rahmani), whose parents fear for her safety, considering it’s only been a year since that brutal murder and the police haven’t caught the killer. She and her parents live in the building where Kit was killed. Her parents stress: “You do not get involved.” Then there’s Dan, who’s clearly got drinking problems, and also has trouble understanding how one man could “fall in love” with another man’s “cornhole.”

The whole building’s full of interesting people. Frank Dixon (Paulino Nunes) isn’t as interesting as he is horrible. He treats his daughter wonderfully while dominating his wife with what looks like an iron fist. He rushes off in the morning, arguing with somebody over the phone about his criminal business stealing cars. That’s when he’s attacked by the Druid, getting an axe planted in his neck and his head lopped off entirely. A vicious, bloody murder in the light of day.

Kaili Greenberg (Erin Karpluk) is another of the building’s residents. She texts dirty pictures with a guy named Kyle. She listens to the couple next door fucking while she stands at the wall touching herself. In the next room is Cassidy, busy in bed with a dude while simultaneously flicking around on a hookup app. Her father’s a white nationalist, not just a drunk. He whittles away his free time on a neo-Nazi site ranting about Muslims being “the real Fifth Column” and other racist rhetoric. A dysfunctional household to say the least. Not a great environment for eighteen-year-old Cassidy.
Saadia and Jen Rijkers (Mercedes Morris), who also lives in the building, are school pals, dealing with final exams coming up and douchebag coffee bros at the local cafe. Jen has a lot going on at home, too— she and her brother Connor (Gabriel Darku) look after Amber Ciotti (Joane Vannicola), a woman significantly older than them but obviously troubled and akin to family to them.

The latest Druid crime scene’s been found and cops are on the scene. Detectives Roberta Hanson (Lisa Berry) and Pujit Singh (Ishan Davé) investigate. Frank’s head is placed on the car and his corpse in the front seat. People stand around snapping pictures with their smartphones like “morbid pieces of shit.” Dt. Hanson actually questioned Frank a year prior in connection to the Druid murder. Now, the man’s head is making the rounds on social media and spreading across news sites everywhere.

Looks as if Cassidy’s dad has influenced her plenty. She goes to school, armed with a pic of the decapitated head, telling Saadia “your people” are responsible. Ugly behaviour from an angry white woman. Cassidy goes so far as to attack the Muslim woman, ripping off her headscarf and humiliating her. It’s only stopped by Ms. Greenberg— yes, the naughty lady’s a teacher at school.

We skip back a year. Dt. Hanson was at the original Druid murder scene. Frank offered to tell the detective what he’d seen. He was parked nearby after getting home late. He heard Kit screaming and saw him come outside bleeding, followed by the Druid. He had a gun, deterring the murderer. He could’ve done something, but ultimately did nothing.
Poor Saadia has more on her mind than racial hate or a final exam. She remembers a year ago. Kit was screaming for help in the hall. Her father wouldn’t let her help him. She’s got PTSD from the incident, and it’s all being dredged up again, causing her to almost dissociate from reality briefly.

Amber drags a container of gasoline into the parking lot while people watch from inside. She pours it all over herself. Violet’s laughing while her man Joe (Ilan Muallem) freaks out by the window. She tells him it’s only water. False alarm. Joe doesn’t find it as funny as Violet. What’s clear, throughout this entire first episode, is the ills of social media and peoples obsession with it are a focal point here, not only with the murders, but in general. Wonderfully, grimly relevant in 2019.
Oh, Joe’s got a whole other life going on, too. He’s secretly in love/lust with another man, Angel Lopez (Salvatore Antonio).

At school, Saadia’s searching for her misplaced smartphone. While she looks through the halls, she doesn’t notice someone creeping around.
Is the Druid coming to get her? No, he’s on the hunt for somebody else.
Cassidy’s starting in on another hookup when the killer walks into the washroom. She goes to leave and finds the door locked. The Druid gives this shitty bully a fitting punishment by dunking her head in a toilet. Except it isn’t only water in the bowl. Something corrosive eats away at Cassidy’s jewellery, then eats away the flesh of her face. Absolutely brutal.
Wow! Slasher came out the gates swinging for Season 3. Father Gore’s loved this show since the first season. It’s only gotten better with each passing instalment. Excited, and horrified, to see where the Druid takes things next.

“9 am to 12 pm” is next.