Slash Them All (2022)

Slash Them All (2022) is an homage to slasher films of yesteryear written by Antoine Maillard. It is your very stereotypical slasher scenario of "a quiet beachside town lived peacefully for years, until one day a mystery killer got on the loose and went on a rampage that would shake this town to its foundation for years to come." This is one of its biggest strengths as it has a healthy foundation to stand on based on several films such as Psycho, Friday the 13th, and Halloween to name a few, that serve as its inspiration and it is clearly panders to the audience that loves these style of films, almost to a fault.     

Let's start with the art of the comic. This was actually one of my favorite things about Slash Them All. It opts for a black-and-white art style that pays homage to older slasher films like Psycho. It was an interesting art choice that would hurt several comics, but only serves the purpose of pandering to fans of those films. The comic overall opts for a more simplistic style, choosing to have the less is more mentality when creating the art for this story. This only serves the comic for the better because it serves the mystery of the story as the face of the killer is blurred out and it does not feel out place at all. This simplistic style only disappears for a few amazing splash panels throughout the story that have much more detail than the surrounding panels and it leaves the reader with an eerie and unsettling feeling as you try to move past them but the image is already burned into your brain. 

Now, how was the actual story, vibe, and theme of the book? Ultimately, it was good but I do not think I was the right person to appreciate it as much as it needed. I am not a fan of the horror or slasher/thriller genre of film by any stretch of the imagination, I am too much of a scaredy cat to get through most modern horror movies, I merely respect what a lot of those early movies did for not only modern horror movies but movies in general. I feel that most of those early films mastered the art of evoking an emotion in an audience that no other art form was doing quite as well. This book was an excellent example of how another art form, comics, could elicit such a reaction from its audience. Slash Them All made me feel really uneasy for most of the ride through the story. It was following the formula of those old horror movies that changed the medium, unease and tension until... STAB STAB KILL KILL! Leaving you uneasy seeing it until the killer shows up again and the process repeats. 

My main complaint with Slash Them All is that it moved at lightning fast pace and it was challenging at times to appreciate the plot and what exactly was going on with the mystery or action sequences. This makes its strongest part, the fact that it followed the formula as mentioned in the previous paragraph, end up pretty weak when looking at the story as a whole. Just like I said in my Goodbye, Eri review I tend to not personally enjoy one shots that are too short because they are usually not fleshed out enough in their characters or plot. I feel that Slash Them All's weakest point was that it didn’t quite build up the suspense as much as some of the older horror movies would have, this book trades in big scares and more tension building scenes for speed reading and that is ultimately what hurts it the most. It did not ruin my enjoyment of the story beyond repair, but it did prevent Slash Them All from reaching greatness.

Overall Score: 7/10

CONTENT WARNING: For those not ok with graphic content should probably steer clear of this book. Slash Them All contains animal abuse, child abuse, and imagery of sexual assault in the pages. Usually they're only a panel on a page but I understand that even a single panel can make some uncomfortable.