Slasher Season 4, Episode 5 recap: Family Ties

Warning: The following article contains spoilers for Slasher Season 4, Episode 5.

I didn’t think anything in Slasher Season 4 could top Jayden’s heartbreaking death from the beginning of the season, but the death in Season 4, Episode 5, “Family Ties,” comes extremely close and might even surpass it.

Things take a dark(er) emotional turn in the fifth episode of the season as we move into the final stretch of episodes. For starters, we finally get to see the third official task of the competition play out. But before that, Liv finds her mother’s body on the beach and is understandably horrified and grief-stricken. She makes a deal with Theo that if she can prove the small boat she found is seaworthy, he’ll leave the island with her.

Then the bell chimes signaling the start of the next round. It’s paintball, with a twist. Grace, Aphra, Vincent, Theo, Liv, Florence, and O’Keefe compete to shoot each other with what essentially amounts to painful rubber bullets. Since O’Keefe has never used a gun before, Florence tells them to stay hidden.

MORE: Why David Cronenberg Wanted To Star In Slasher Season 4

In this competition, the person who wins (or avoids getting shot) gets to stay in the bunker for the night with the person who comes in second place. To start, Florence, Grace, Vincent, Theo, and Aphra team up against Liv, who is a force to be reckoned with thanks to her military background.

Plus, tensions couldn’t be higher between Liv and the rest of the family due to tensions between her, Florence, and Vincent reaching a breaking point. Vincent even tries to attack Liv at the beginning of the episode but quickly gets his a** handed to him. They remain convinced that Liv is the killer while Liv thinks the same of them, especially with her mother killed so soon after the kidnapping reveal came to light.

What I did find confounding was Grace’s decision to team up with Florence and Vincent. Grace and Florence have shown nothing but pure hatred for each other this entire season, to the point Grace bit off Florence’s finger! Yet for some reason, she sides with them over Liv?

Grace had allied with Birgit before she died but said nothing about her death. It feels like shoddy characterization or poor continuity on the writer’s behalf here. At least Christy finally showed some dismay at her daughter competing, albeit not much.

With the game having commenced, Vincent immediately shoots his brother after Theo starts preaching about how they need to band together or whatever. It doesn’t take long for Liv to take out Aphra and Vincent. Then Grace gets Liv. Once Liv is out of the running, Florence immediately turns on Grace, shooting her eye out. “An eye for a finger!” I mean, Grace, what did you expect from Florence!? She should have known better than to trust her.

Since Florence made O’Keefe hide, they’re the first and second place winners, meaning they get to retreat to the bunker. But Spencer has more twists in store. He gives them an additional challenge, and there can only be one winner. Wanting whoever inherits his fortune to be ruthless and capable of making impossible decisions, Spencer (or someone else) rigged the bunker to fill with gas, leaving only one mask and oxygen tank behind.

MORE: Slasher Season 4, Episode 4 recap: Upstairs, Downstairs 

They share it for a while until the oxygen starts getting low and Florence, yet again, makes the selfish choice, choosing her own life over O’Keefe’s. It’s heartbreaking to watch O’Keefe slowly suffocate and die while pleading for their mother, crying out, “Mom, Mommy,” as they take their last breaths, and Florence coolly pushes them away to take the oxygen for herself.

So I can hardly blame Theo and Vincent for what they do to their mother afterward. O’Keefe’s death pushes Theo over the edge, and he forcefully drags his mother back to that hideous piece of “art” she created earlier in the season. He zip-ties her hands to it and leaves her there overnight. If she dies, well, that’s justice for O’Keefe, and if she’s alive, then that proves she’s the killer.

Slasher Season 4, Episode 5 recap: Florence’s twisted display of art

In previous episodes, whoever was the star of the flashbacks was the next victim of The Gentleman. That changes in Slasher Season 4, Episode 5 as Florence is the flashback star, yet she’s still alive by the end of the episode (she better have a brutal death because her character is a horrible person).

Yet again, we see that Florence has always been capable of causing her own children great pain if it was to her own advantage. Desperate to get her art accepted into a gallery, Florence creates a piece that revolves around Vincent’s kidnapping and Theo’s trauma.

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She puts a dummy in a glass case and dumps blood on it while tapes of Theo’s initial questioning from when he was a kid play on a loop. Then she films his reaction to seeing the piece and adds the video of him to the finished product. Talk about twisted. Imagine using your own child’s trauma as fodder for your “art” without their consent!

After all of that, Florence’s work is accepted to a gallery, but even Spencer isn’t impressed with her for using their family’s tragedy for clout. You know it’s bad when Spencer, of all people, thinks you messed up.

New episodes of Slasher Season 4 stream Thursdays exclusively on Shudder.