My Thoughts on The Blade Cuts Deeper
The Blade Cuts Deeper is a movie that leaves you a bit unsure on how to feel - not in a confusing way, but on who deserves sympathy and who doesn't.
Many slashers practically hand you a guidebook - here’s the villain, here’s the hero, and here’s the order everyone else will die in - but this doesn't do that, like it came from a time before slashers cared about keeping score.
It definitely feels different than the 80s slashers I grew up on, as those movies are fun, but they move fast, and sometimes too fast for their own good, but the Blade Cuts Deeper slows everything down.
It brings back that older style of suspense, where the mood mattered as much as the violence.
The plot sounds simple at first, where a TV host named John Abbott becomes the target of a masked killer, and Abbott is also just a terrible human being, where h’s rude, selfish, and treats everyone around him like they’re beneath him - John Tueart plays him so convincingly that I almost felt guilty for wanting something bad to happen to the character.
The killer doesn’t just go after Abbott though, and anyone who gets in the way becomes collateral damage, and thee movie pulled you into this sort of moral maze you don't expect, as normally, when a slasher gives you a truly awful character, you’re supposed to cheer when the killer shows up, but here you can't do that.
But really, the movie isn't asking you to root for anyone, as it's more interested in showing a world where violence doesn’t care about fairness, and cruelty isn’t limited to the person holding the weapon, and there’s something cold about the way the story unfolds.
It gives you time with the supporting characters - just enough to know who they are and what they want - and then it lets the killer take that away in a blunt, final way, where the normal rules are ignored.
As mentioned, it has a slow pace to it all too, and instead of sprinting toward each kill, the movie takes its time, where the music swells slowly, the camera moves deliberately, and when the violence finally arrives, it’s nasty and practical.
The camera doesn’t rush past the aftermath, but it doesn’t feel like it’s showing off either, and the whole thing reminded me of older slashers - not the ones people usually reference, but the ones that came out when the genre was still figuring out what it wanted to be.
The final act is where the movie’s questions about rooting interest really come together, and by the time Abbott and the killer finally face off, plenty of innocent people are dead.
Do I hope the killer succeeds, even after all the damage he caused? Or do I hope Abbott gets out alive, even though he practically dragged everyone into this mess with his reckless decisions and selfish behavior?
It’s not often that a slasher forces that kind of dilemma, as usually the showdown is the easiest part to predict, but it's all fully aware enough that neither option feels right, and it builds the final sequence around that discomfort.
I won’t say the ending is surprising, but it lands in a way that felt fitting, as it felt like the story had already done the heavy lifting long before the last few minutes.
While a lot of of modern slasher throwbacks try too hard to “look retro,” The Blade Cuts Deeper felt like it understood the era it was evoking instead of just copying it, and while it may not be the most action-packed slasher, it does know exactly what it wants to be.
The result is a slasher that values mood over spectacle, tension over speed, and moral uncertainty over easy answers, and I appreciated a lot about it.
The Blade Cuts Deeper was released on November 18, 2025 in North America.