REVIEW: ‘The Furies’ Is Slasher Brutality Reimagined

It’s that time of year and the powers of Shudder and horror are at their peak. This October, the streaming service focused on horror, thriller, and all things supernatural is bringing a slate of exclusives that delight the spooky sense in us all. And what better way to start than with a slasher? In The Furies, we get the typical scares and creative kills we’ve come to love about slashers, however, it also offers so much more.

The film follows high school student Kayla (Airlie Dodds) after she and her best friend, Maddie (Ebony Vagulans), find themselves abducted by a sinister presence. Locked in a box, Kayla wakes up in the middle of a forest with no idea how she got there or where she is, the only thing she does know is that Maddie was taken too. As she attempts to find her best friend she realizes that she isn’t alone.

The Furies offers up not just one creatively designed masked killer but six, six killers to stalk six young women, all of whom were taken the same way as Kayla. Instead of only looking out for herself, Kayla repeatedly attempts to save the other girls as the killers keep closing in. But there is something weird about them, they’re attacking each other too.

Now, this isn’t just a normal slasher, The Furies offers up narrative twists and turns that make it stand out from your garden variety masked killer versus final girl. The number of killers and potential final girls offers a unique pool of potential storylines that as they all fall, they all start to look out for themselves. One of the hallmarks of the final girl is her ability to adapt and assume the aggression and weapon of the killer. The Furies plays with this concept in an unexpected way and when the girls turn on each other, Kayla’s killer instinct comes out and she does whatever it takes to survive and seek revenge on her abductors.

Outside of a unique plot The Furies also offers up something else – a complex final girl. With Kayla, we see a girl having to confront her past mistakes, her complicated friendship with Maddie, all while also having to adapt to an environment that continually triggers her seizures while surviving the rain of killers barreling towards her. Dodds is believable as Kayla in both her power and her vulnerability on-screen. While the opening of The Furies is a little rough in the acting department, the forest brings out the best in Dodds as well as the rest of the cast.

Finally, it wouldn’t be a slasher without talking about the kills. With so many potential victims and killers, The Furies gives us a bevy of creative kills. From machetes to the head to faces peeled off with an ax, the violence and gore in the film are top-notch. With buckets of blood and a killer sound design that amplifies injury, The Furies shines because of its kills but isn’t only defined by them.

Overall, The Furies is the perfect way to start off the spookiest of months on Shudder. It’s a fun watch that also offers up a twisty story that expands on the typical tropes of the genre while also subverting them. Kayla isn’t only fighting the killers, but the other girls too which allows the film to explore survival in a unique way.

The Furies is available on streaming and VOD.