‘Slasher: Ripper’ Creator Aaron Martin and Showrunner Ian Carpenter on Working With Shudder: ‘Perfect Collaborators’ With a ‘Razor Sharp Eye’ for Horror

Slasher: Ripper, the fifth season of the hit horror series, recently debuted on Shudder. The show found a home at the fan-favorite streaming service ahead of Season 4, after previously being bounced around other places, such as Netflix. PopCulture.com had a chance to speak with series creator Aaron Martin and showrunner Ian Carpenter during a roundtable conversation with other entertainment news outlets, and expressed sincere joy on working with Shudder for the past two seasons, saying the people behind the scenes are “perfect collaborators” who all have a “razor-sharp eye” for horror.

“It’s been amazing and incredible,” Martin offered. “Shudder’s the place to do horror, and we’re so lucky and spoiled. The people we work with are so smart about horror, far smarter than I am. They’re just this amazing resource that adds great notes, adds great directions for the seasons, and they’re our … I mean, they are our home and it’s an incredible… We’re just extremely lucky.”

Elaborating on Martin’s praise for the streamer, Carpenter added, “The depth of conversation is incredible. You’re talking about people sitting atop the biggest library of horror. So things we reference or things they’ll bring up where I’m like, ‘I’ve never even heard of that.’ I go and watch it and you’re like, ‘Oh, okay.’ I remember a film that was referenced that I think totally informed the scavenger hunt and the body at the end of season four. 

He continued: “Also, too, those guys have a real razor-sharp eye to the turning of a mystery and deep, deep respect because of their connection to their fans where they’re like, ‘We’re worried that they’re going to clue in here because our fans are so smart.’ So there were times last season as we started that they were like, ‘I think you got to obfuscate that’ or ‘hold off a bit here,’ or things like that. Anyway, it was amazing. It’s just rich. It’s the perfect collaborators for sure.”

In the newest season of Shudder’s anthology horror series, Emmy-winning actor Eric McCormack plays charismatic 19th-century tycoon Basil Garvey, a man who is as ruthless as he is successful, and whose villainy is rivaled by a mysterious new serial killer known as The Widow. The show also stars Gabriel Darku, Paula Brancati, Steve Byers, Christopher Jacot, Joanne Vannicola, Salvatore Antonio, Lisa Berry, Mercedes Morris, Sabrina Grdevich, and Jefferson Brown, among others. The first three episodes of Slasher: Ripper are now streaming on Shudder and AMC+, with new episodes rolling out weekly on Thursdays.