Tag Archives: Slasher

Featured, Slasher

Slasher: Guilty Party tips the typical horror genre on its head

6 Comments

It’s understandable if you’ve dismissed the Slasher horror anthology series as simply a gore-fest jam-packed with characters ripe for picking off. But you’d be totally wrong. Though the genre is bursting with projects like that, Slasher isn’t just about the scare and the gore; Aaron Martin has created intricate storylines and interesting, believable characters that you feel badly for as they’re being dispatched in horrible, awful ways.

Just in time for Halloween, the sophomore season Slasher: Guilty Party drops on Netflix in its entirety on Tuesday, with a some returning faces to augment newbies assembled for slaughter. Where Season 1 of Slasher followed murders committed in a small-town, Guilty Party boasts the classic horror movie setting: a summer camp. It’s there that a group of former summer camp counsellors who—while attempting to cover up a crime they committed years before—become the target of a murder spree. Is it revenge, or happenstance?

Martin has assembled an impressive all-Canadian cast for Season 2, including Degrassi‘s Melinda Shankar as Talvinder, Being Erica‘s Paula Brancati as Dawn, Alias Grace‘s Rebecca Liddiard as Andi, The Strain‘s Jim Watson as Noah, Heartland‘s Kaitlyn Leeb as Susan and Lost & Found’s Music Studios‘ Lovell Adams-Gray as Peter; the sextet portray the counsellors. The ensemble is rounded out with Season 1 performers Joanne Vannicola, Christopher Jacot and Jefferson Brown in new roles alongside Leslie Hope, Paulino Nunes, Ty Olsson, Sebastian Piggott and Madison Cheetatow.

Though there are plenty of scares, Guilty Party does have some sweet moments; one we watched during filming at a Scouts Canada camp just outside Orangeville, Ont., boasted Shankar’s Talvinder receiving a necklace from Brancati’s Dawn.

“It was a bonding scene between the two,” Shankar says. “Tal is being gifted a nice necklace, but of course whenever there is a nice, sweet moment there is always something to contrast that.”

For Brancati, who had worked with Martin on Being Erica, signing on to Slasher: Guilty Party was a no-brainer.

“Dawn is a character that I don’t always get to play,” Brancati says. “On the outside, she’s wealthy, privileged, with a crusty exterior and a bit bitchy at times. She comes from a divorced home and has a lot of vulnerabilities that she’s masking with her sarcastic humour. She definitely has no filter.” Brancati says none of the characters is an archetype; they’re layered and very flawed.

“Aaron is unafraid of being unfiltered,” Brancati says of her showrunner. “He’s got a really dark mind and isn’t afraid to push the envelope.” Brancati, who is new to acting in the genre, admits she’s had nightmares after reflecting on the scenes she and her co-stars have filmed after a day of production. The result? It’s not hard to play scared.

Brancati divulges a bit more of the plot of Guilty Party, explaining the counsellors return to the camp, which has since become a commune, creating conflict between the visitors and those who now call the place home. Weather also adds to the drama: a massive winter storm ensures everyone is kept in tight quarters and unable to escape.

“There is a lot of gore and a lot of horror, certainly, but the characters are really textured and the relationships are really interesting and complicated and messy,” Brancati says. “Character-driven stories are interesting TV to me.”

Slasher: Guilty Party‘s full season of eight episodes arrive Tuesday, Oct. 17, on Netflix.

Images courtesy of Shaftesbury.

 

 

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedinmail
Slasher

Slasher wrapping production on Season 2

From a media release:

Production will soon wrap on the second chapter of Aaron Martin’s award-winning anthology thriller series Slasher, produced by Shaftesbury, to be called Slasher 2: Guilty Party. Leslie Hope (24, NCIS, Suits) leads a large ensemble cast comprised of returning actors including Paula Brancati (Sadie’s Last Days on Earth, Degrassi: The Next Generation), Jim Watson (The Strain, Between), Christopher Jacot (Rogue, Eureka), Joanne Vannicola (Being Erica), Jefferson Brown (Rookie Blue, Degrassi: The Next Generation), and Dean McDermott (Ecstasy, CSI). New cast members this season include Lovell Adams-Gray (Lost & Found Music Studios, Dead of Summer), Kaitlyn Leeb (Shadowhunters: The Mortal Instruments, Heartland), Rebecca Liddiard (Houdini & Doyle, MsLabelled), Melinda Shankar (Degrassi: The Next Generation, How to Be Indie), Sebastian Pigott (Rogue, Revenge), Paulino Nunes (Designated Survivor, Brooklyn), Madison Cheeatow (Heartland, Sadie’s Last Days on Earth), Ty Olsson (The 100, Supernatural), and Simu Liu (Kim’s Convenience, Taken).

Aaron Martin (Saving Hope, Being Erica, Degrassi: The Next Generation), recipient of the 2017 WGC Showrunner Award, returns as showrunner. Set in the remote Canadian winter wilderness, the story revolves around a group of former summer camp counsellors who are forced to return to the isolated campground to retrieve evidence of a crime they committed in their youth. Before long the group, and the camp’s latest inhabitants, members of a spiritual retreat with their own secrets to hide, find themselves targeted by someone – or something – out for horrific revenge. Nominated for five Canadian Screen Awards for its first season, Slasher 2: Guilty Party has been filming on location in Orangeville, Ontario and surrounding area since February.

Brought together by a horrific secret they’ve long kept buried, a group of former friends must return in the dead of winter to the now-closed summer camp they worked at five years before. Deep in the snow-covered wilderness, the rundown camp has now become a private and isolated “intentional community” cut-off from civilization by weather, wilderness, and choice. The group’s secretive reason to return causes tension and tempers to flare. Before long, they find themselves gruesomely targeted by someone – or something – out for horrific revenge. The location’s isolation starts to wear on relationships and expose surprising secrets, and as the winter weather worsens, so does the killer’s grisly spree. As blood and secrets spill across the vast and snowy wild surrounding the camp, the mismatched group must try to escape not just the killer’s retribution, but also survive the deadly elements.

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedinmail
Featured, Saving Hope

X Company and Slasher stars guest on Saving Hope

2 Comments

Last week’s episode of Saving Hope was certainly memorable, wasn’t it? It’s not every day a car comes crashing into Hope Zion’s ER. Not only did the accident send shockwaves through the hospital,  but caused Thomas Leffering to seriously rethink cutting so many of Hope Zion’s services. And what about Alex realizing she’s pregnant?

Thomas’ rethink continues in this week’s new instalment, “Knowing Me, Knowing You,” which I visited the set of during production last year. Here’s what CTV has revealed regarding some key storylines:

Dr. Charlie Harris and Dr. Manny Palmer treat two love birds who have an annual weekend-long love fest, despite the fact the woman is married to someone else. Meanwhile, when Charlie assigns Dr. Maggie Lin to evaluate the interns, it brings out her nurturing side and leads Dr. Billy Scott to ask Maggie to be his mentor. Following Dr. Zach Miller’s advice to use the “kill them with kindness” approach to negotiating, Dr. Dawn Bell struggles to bring out her nurturing side when she tries to get her Chief of Surgery position back. Maggie and Dawn find themselves at odds when they work together to treat a single dad with a ninja star lodged in his neck.

And here’s what we can tell you after watching a screener.

Shahir shines …
I’ve been missing Shahir’s eccentricities of late, so it’s nice to have him back—and full of quips—on Sunday. Also, we finally meet Jonathan, played by Slasher‘s Christopher Jacot, who is hoping to score some business from the hospital.

… and Michelle Nolden does too
Dawn is a pretty uptight individual, so her quest to reclaim her Chief of Surgery gig is odd and incredibly funny. The scenes allow Nolden to showcase her comic timing and we want more.

X Company star in the house!
Lara Jean Chorostecki guest-stars as Claudia, who is in the ER with her injured love match when things go really bad.

Thomas has a change of heart
Let’s just say the events of the last episode has had a profound effect on Thomas.

Saving Hope airs Sundays at 10 p.m. ET on CTV.

Images courtesy of Bell Media.

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedinmail
Awards

The 2016 UBCP/ACTRA Awards nominees are announced

From a media release:

With a mission to build the BC star system, each year the UBCP/ACTRA Awards gala honours five members for work done in the past year. This awards show is the only peer-adjudicated performer awards show in BC, lending a strong sense of professional pride to the nominees and winners. The red carpet gala will take place at the Vancouver Playhouse on November 12, 2016.“We are extremely proud to showcase our homegrown talent at the fifth annual UBCP/ACTRA Awards. Each year has been special in its own way and we know that this year we will, once again, experience the feeling of pride we get when we honour the talent here in BC,” says Alvin Sanders, President of UBCP/ACTRA.
The nominees are:

BEST ACTOR

  • Steven Cree Molison: Blackstone (Retribution)
  • Eli Goree: Race
  • Brandon Jay McLaren: Slasher (In the Pride of His Face)
  • Ty Olsson: UnREAL (Savior)
  • Aleks Paunovic: Numb
  • Juan Riedinger: The Romeo Section (Mandate of Heaven)

BEST ACTRESS

  • Priscilla Faia: You Me Her (Cigarettes and Funions and Crap)
  • Crystal Lowe: Signed Sealed Delivered (From Paris with Love)
  • Carmen Moore: Blackstone (Flat Line)
  • Christina Sicoli: Paranormal Solutions Inc. (Happy Endings and New Beginnings)
  • Camille Sullivan: The Birdwatcher

BEST EMERGING PERFORMER

  • Emily Haine: Fargo (The Gift of the Magi)
  • Dejan Loyola: Saving Hope (Goodbye Girl)
  • Julie Lynn Mortensen: Drawing Home
  • Jacob Tremblay: Room
  • Jonathan Whitesell: The 100 (Terms and Conditions)
  • Mayumi Yoshida: The Man in the High Castle (The Illustrated Woman)

BEST VOICE

  • Peter Kelamis: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (The Hooffields and McColts: Big Daddy McColt)
  • Andrea Libman: My Little Pony Friendship is Magic (The One Where
  • Pinkie Pie Knows Pinkie Pie & Fluttershy)
  • Peter New: Littlest Pet Shop (Petnapped!; Sunil)
  • Lee Tockar: Slugterra (Get Pronto!; Pronto)
  • Vincent Tong: Nerds and Monsters (Tickle Stick/Monstarrrghs!; Irwin)

BEST STUNT

  • Leif Havdale: Arrow (Code of Silence)
  • Leif Havdale: The Flash (Legends of Today)
  • Adrian Hein: Arrow (Schism)
  • Stunt Ensemble (Rhys Williams, Leif Havdale): The Candidate
  • Stunt Ensemble (Mike Mitchell, Lauro Chartrand, Dean Choe, Scott Nicholson, Crystal Dalman): X Files (Babylon)

In addition to the five performance awards, two UBCP/ACTRA industry awards will be presented: the Lorena Gale Woman of Distinction Award and the John Juliani Award of Excellence.

The UBCP/ACTRA Awards will be held on Saturday, November 12, 2016 at the Vancouver Playhouse with over 600 industry professionals including UBCP/ACTRA members, press and politicians in attendance.

The Union of British Columbia Performers (UBCP/ACTRA) is an autonomous branch of ACTRA (Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists), the national organization of professional performers working in the English-language recorded media in Canada. ACTRA represents the interests of 22,000 members across Canada – the foundation of Canada’s highly acclaimed professional performing community.

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedinmail
Featured, Slasher, What Would Sal Do?

Future of Super Channel originals Slasher, What Would Sal Do? and Tiny Plastic Men in limbo

2 Comments

 

UPDATE: As per a feature in Playback magazine, New Metric Media has found a new home for What Would Sal Do? The series has been acquired by Bell Media and will air on TMN and HBO Canada.

It wasn’t the news the creators and producers of Slasher, What Would Sal Do? and Tiny Plastic Men wanted to hear. Making a television show in Canada is difficult enough, but it’s impossible when the company responsible for broadcasting your series goes into creditor protection.

That’s the sad scenario facing the trio of original Canadian productions after Super Channel’s parent company, Allarco Entertainment, was granted creditor protection for 30 days under the Companies Creditors Arrangement Act in early June. Now, two months later, things are dire. All three properties have been released back to the production companies to be shopped around to new broadcasters. Because the case is still in the courts, the series’ creators, showrunners and producers aren’t able to comment, but Super Channel did provide an official statement regarding What Would Sal Do?

“Unfortunately, we will not be moving forward with the series at this time,” Melissa Kajpust, head of creative development, said. “Due to our recent CCAA filing we have had to do some financial restructuring and unfortunately this was one of the projects affected.” That, to put it frankly, sucks. Shot in Sudbury, Ont., Sal stars Dylan Taylor as entitled underachiever, Sal, who is challenged to be a good person when he discovers he’s the Second Coming of Christ. The modern day parable also stars Jennifer Dale as Maria, Sal’s mother, a virgin and devoted catholic, Ryan McDonald as Vince, Sal’s best friend and Scott Thompson as the career driven Father Luke, Maria’s friend and confidant. TV, Eh? visited the set while cameras were rolling and we’ve seen the first couple of episodes and it’s not only damn funny and boundary-pushing, but it’s heartfelt. Taylor, in particular, is splendid as Sal.

Sal is written, created and executive produced by Andrew De Angelis alongside writers Kurt Seaton, Mark Forward, Alex Levine, Mark DeAngelis and Brandy Hewitt. Sal director Samir Rehem has been nominated for a Directors Guild of Canada Award for his work on the pilot episode, an additional kick in the crotch for a series that has eight instalments filmed, edited, in the can and ready for broadcast. And yet it has nowhere to be broadcast. New Metric Media is currently seeking a home for the series.

If there is a second season of Slasher, it won’t be on Super Channel. Created by Aaron Martin, the horror series—filmed in and around Sudbury and Parry Sound, Ont.—starred Katie McGrath as Sarah Bennett, a young woman who returns to the small town where she was born, only to find herself the centrepiece in a series of horrifying copycat murders based on the widely known, grisly killings of her parents. Slasher co-starred Brandon Jay McLaren, Wendy Crewson, Steve Byers and Dean McDermott. The series’ production company, Shaftesbury, couldn’t comment on what was happening with regard to a sophomore season.

Tiny Plastic Men, meanwhile, was in the middle of production on Season 4 when the filing shut them down. The Canadian Screen Award and Canadian Comedy Award nominee, from Mosaic Entertainment, stars writers Chris Craddock, Mark Meer and Matt Alden as Crad, October and Addison, three man-boys who test bizarre toy prototypes in their playroom of an office at the eccentric Gottfried Brothers Toy and Train Company.

Fingers crossed things are sorted out for all three.

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedinmail