The Horror of Dolores Roach review — Amazon’s cannibal comedy is both killer and filler

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“I don’t want to be a serial killer!” yells Dolores as she’s about to claim her fourth victim in two weeks. What she wants, having spent the past 16 years in jail, is simply to earn an honest living as a masseuse. Now, however, she has blood rather than essential oils on her hands.

Part Grand Guignol shocker, part quirky comedy, The Horror of Dolores Roach is a new eight-episode Amazon series based on showrunner Aaron Mark’s hit podcast (itself adapted from his play). Though it becomes a Sweeney Todd-style tale full of violence and vengeance, it begins unassumingly as a bittersweet story about a fortysomething ex-con trying to build a new life in a world she no longer recognises.

The humour and horror initially stem from the insidious forces of gentrification. Returning to New York’s Washington Heights — where she was arrested for her boyfriend’s drug-dealing offences — Dolores (Justina Machado) is alarmed to find an unfamiliar, unwelcoming neighbourhood now populated by the bustling middle classes rather than hustling rogues. That these ultra-sanitised streets are shot in a way that seems overwhelming, even frightening, is a sharp shift from the usual perspectives on “urban regeneration”.

A dingy empanada café run by an old acquaintance, Luis (Alejandro Hernandez), offers Dolores an oasis in the commercialised desert, as well as a place to stay. Later she opens a pop-up massage parlour in the basement, a venture that makes her feel free for the first time in decades. So when the restaurant’s landlord (a suitably odious Marc Maron) threatens to evict them in the name of “social Darwinism” — while taking advantage of a free massage — Dolores’s own survival instincts kick in. A snap judgment provokes a snapped neck. 

Not one to let good meat go to waste, Luis, a self-proclaimed “misunderstood culinary visionary”, decides to hide the evidence in plain sight by making “secret ingredient” pastries. And as demand for the delicacy grows, so too does the supply of “ingredients” as more people fall prey to almost two decades of Dolores’s pent-up rage. 

It’s possible to view the cannibalism as a subversive send-up of how independent businesses are devoured by franchises, or a comment on how those who claim to “serve the community” often exploit it. But this may well be overanalysing a show that includes lines like “I’m going to put his ass on the menu”.

If the first few episodes have a cynical bite, the show increasingly leans further towards the ghoulish, grisly aspects of the story, which some viewers will find less deliciously macabre than simply in poor taste.

Ultimately The Horror is too grim and obscene to be whimsical, too offbeat to terrify. Yet in Machado the series has a compelling, charismatic lead who conveys her character’s dark contradictions with minimal effort. Dolores remains recognisably human even as she serves up human remains.

★★★☆☆

On Amazon Prime Video from July 7