Netflix’s New #1 Show Is Secretly A Slasher

Although Netflix’s new number one show, His & Hers, was sold as a straightforward psychological thriller, a closer look at the show proves that it’s actually a slasher story in disguise. Based on the Alice Feeney novel of the same name, Netflix’s His & Hers is the latest twisty psychological mystery to top the streaming service’s most-watched charts.

Only a week after the Harlan Coben adaptation Run Away pushed Stranger Things season 5 from the streaming service’s top spot, His & Hers nabbed the most-watched title from this earlier psychological thriller. Starring Jon Bernthal and Tessa Thompson, His & Hers sees Thompson’s reporter Anna return to her hometown in Atlanta to investigate a murder.

Meanwhile, Jon Bernthal’s Detective Jack Harper looks into both the case and Anna, as he is suspicious about her potential links to the victims. The ending of His & Hers reveals everything as the twisty mystery unfolds, but as the story of the show gets darker and darker, its true genre becomes apparent late in its run.

His & Hers Is One Of The Best Slasher Shows Ever Made

His & Hers is a slasher show in all but name, and that is wild given the show’s mainstream success on Netflix. From its earliest trailers to its poster, the show has been sold as a conventional psychological thriller, with unreliable narrators, a host of suspects, and a knotty, non-linear story to unravel.

However, a closer look proves that, at its core, Feeney’s novel and its Netflix adaptation are both slasher stories. The elaborate, bloody murders, the hidden identity of the antagonist, the disturbing revelation of teenage misdeeds at the core of the story, and the cat-and-mouse plotting are all classic slasher elements. Meanwhile, the eventual revelation of the killer’s motives seals the deal.

At its core, His & Hers is the story of a murderer getting gruesome revenge on teenage bullies years after they faced no consequences for their awful actions. In this regard, the show is as much a slasher as 1980s Friday the 13th, 1986’s Slaughter High, or 2000’s Cherry Falls.

Although the ending of His & Hers features a classic whodunit twist that could have come from any number of murder mysteries, this only makes the show feel more like a slasher. After all, the slasher genre has become synonymous with murder mysteries in recent years.

Slasher TV Shows Have A Mixed History

Although the 1980s original Friday the 13th was a Giallo-style murder mystery where the killer was only revealed in the ending, subsequent slashers took the opposite approach. The major slasher franchises of the ‘80s and early ‘90s, including Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, Child’s Play, and Candyman, not only revealed their killers but also made them lead characters.

In contrast, more recent slasher movies follow the template set out by Scream, wherein the killer’s identity is kept secret until the ending. In the last five years alone, Happy Death Day 2 U, There’s Someone Inside Your House, Bodies Bodies Bodies, Thanksgiving, Totally Killer, Scream 2022, It’s A Wonderful Knife, and Heart Eyes all followed this setup.

As such, although His & Hers was sold as a crime show, the series is really a slasher at heart. It might seem strange that, given the popularity of slashers at the box office, the show didn’t lead with this. However, small-screen slasher shows have a far spottier, more mixed history with critics and viewers alike.

For every rare minor hit like the Canadian anthology Slasher or SyFy’s cult success Chucky, there are numerous major flops that only lasted one or two seasons, like 2022’s I Know What You Did Last Summer, Scream Queens, MTV's Scream, Harper’s Island, or Dead of Summer. Even American Horror Story: 1984 failed to impress critics compared to earlier outings.

Despite boasting a link to one of the most famous horror TV franchises of all time, this American Horror Story outing was written off as both predictable and convoluted by reviewers upon release. This served as further proof that slasher TV shows are a hard sell for audiences, which explains why His & Hers downplayed its true nature.

His & Hers Proves TV Slashers Need a Rebrand

His & Hers might be a superb slasher series, but the success of the streaming series with audiences proves that newer shows need to downplay their slasher elements to sell themselves. His & Hers had to be packaged as a straightforward psychological thriller, something viewers love to see on streaming, rather than a bloody horror show.

Horror TV shows have a more mixed, niche reputation, which explains the marketing push of His & Hers. The same approach was also taken by 2018’s Sharp Objects, another acclaimed series that boosted many slasher hallmarks, but was still sold as a psychological thriller for fear of alienating mainstream viewers.

Although the show proves that slasher stories still get viewers hooked, this Alice Feeney adaptation is a mixed bag for the TV sub-genre's future. After all, His & Hers might be a slasher story, but its success is also proof that this branding rarely seems to attract mainstream streaming audiences.