Netflix’s New #1 Show Is Secretly A Slasher

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Netflix’s newest hit show, His & Hers, initially seemed like a typical psychological thriller, but it’s actually a cleverly disguised slasher story. Based on Alice Feeney’s novel, His & Hers is the latest suspenseful mystery to become a top pick on the streaming platform.

Okay, so I just finished watching His & Hers, and it’s definitely earned its spot at the top of the streaming charts. It actually unseated Run Away – which itself had just bumped Stranger Things – so that tells you something! This psychological thriller stars Jon Bernthal and Tessa Thompson, and it really pulled me in. Thompson plays Anna, a reporter who goes back to her hometown of Atlanta to look into a murder case. It’s a gripping story and I can see why everyone’s talking about it.

Detective Jack Harper, played by Jon Bernthal, investigates both the crime and Anna, because he suspects she might be connected to the victims. The complex mystery of His & Hers is ultimately revealed in the ending, and as the show gets increasingly dark, it becomes clear what genre it really is.

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

Despite being a huge hit on Netflix, His & Hers functions much like a slasher film, which is surprising. The show was promoted as a typical psychological thriller—it features characters who aren’t trustworthy, plenty of potential suspects, and a complex, twisting plot.

Despite its complexities, both Feeney’s novel and the Netflix series are fundamentally slasher stories. They feature common tropes of the genre, like gruesome murders, a mysterious killer, shocking secrets about the teenage characters, and a suspenseful chase. Ultimately, learning why the killer is acting this way confirms this categorization.

At its heart, His & Hers is a revenge story about someone hunting down and brutally punishing their teenage bullies years after the bullying happened with no repercussions. It’s very much a slasher series, similar in style to classics like Friday the 13th, Slaughter High, and Cherry Falls.

The ending of His & Hers uses a typical ‘who done it’ twist, similar to many murder mysteries. However, this actually strengthens the show’s resemblance to a slasher film, as the slasher genre and murder mysteries have become closely linked in recent years.

Slasher TV Shows Have A Mixed History

The first Friday the 13th movie from the 1980s was a whodunit mystery, keeping the killer’s identity secret until the end. However, later slasher films did things differently. Popular franchises like Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, Child’s Play, and Candyman didn’t just show who the killer was – they made the killer a main character in the story.

More modern slasher films, starting with Scream, generally keep the killer’s identity a mystery until the very end. This approach has been used in many recent movies, including Happy Death Day 2 U, There’s Someone Inside Your House, Bodies Bodies Bodies, Thanksgiving, Totally Killer, the 2022 Scream reboot, It’s A Wonderful Knife, and Heart Eyes.

Despite being marketed as a crime drama, His & Hers is essentially a slasher series. It’s surprising the show didn’t emphasize this, considering how popular slasher movies were at the time. However, slasher shows on television haven’t historically been as well-received by critics or audiences.

While a few horror anthologies like the Canadian film Slasher and SyFy’s Chucky have found success, many more, such as I Know What You Did Last Summer (2022), Scream Queens, MTV’s Scream, Harper’s Island, and Dead of Summer, were quickly cancelled after only one or two seasons. Even a popular series like American Horror Story: 1984 didn’t receive the same positive reviews as previous seasons.

As a horror fan, I remember when this season of American Horror Story came out and it just…didn’t land. Critics found it both totally predictable and needlessly complicated, which honestly felt like a sign that scary slasher-style shows struggle to really grab viewers on TV. That’s why the creators of His & Hers seemed to deliberately try and hide the fact that it was a horror series, I think – they were worried about turning people off.

His & Hers Proves TV Slashers Need a Rebrand

While His & Hers is a great slasher series, its popularity shows that new shows need to tone down the horror to attract viewers. Instead of being marketed as a gory horror show, His & Hers was successfully presented as a psychological thriller – a genre that performs well on streaming platforms.

Horror TV shows often have a dedicated but smaller audience, which is why there’s been a lot of promotion for His & Hers. A similar strategy was used with the popular 2018 series Sharp Objects. While it featured many elements of slasher films, it was marketed as a psychological thriller to attract a wider audience and avoid turning off mainstream viewers.

I’ve been watching this new show, and it’s interesting. It definitely shows there’s still an audience for slasher thrillers, but I’m not sure it’s a great sign for the future of the genre. While His & Hers is technically a slasher story, its popularity doesn’t really translate to attracting a wider audience on streaming platforms, which is a bit disappointing.

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2026-01-13 22:41