The Horror of Dolores Roach Premiere: Grade Prime Video’s Killer Cannibal Series
It’s so nice to meat you, Dolores!
Prime Video dropped all eight episodes of The Horror of Dolores Roach on Friday, July 7. In the premiere, Dolores (One Day at a Time‘s Justina Machado) holds us, and the woman portraying her in an on-stage production, hostage to share her life story. Yes, Dolores is a notorious murderer who collaborated with a cannibal to cover up her killings, but it’s not as sensational as the media wants you to think!
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So she takes us back to the beginning: the day she is released from the 16-year prison sentence she served for selling weed. Dolores’ boyfriend, Dominic, set her up and she hasn’t heard from him since. Even though all signs point to him being a terrible boyfriend, with just $200 and nowhere else to go, she heads to their old apartment in New York City’s Washington Heights expecting some kind of reunion.
When she arrives, Dolores finds that the neighborhood she once knew has mutated into something else entirely. Pretentious yoga studios, skaters and the kind of dogs that can be carried in canvas totes have completely taken over. A young white couple lives in her apartment now and Dominic is nowhere to be found.
In a sort of purgatory between her old life and a new one that has yet to take shape, she walks the streets without any clear plan.
Then, she stumbles upon a familiar joint: Empanada Loca. The kid she used to sell weed to, Luis (New Amsterdam‘s Alejandro Hernandez), still owns the place. Despite outsiders slowly devouring the neighborhood, Luis himself hasn’t changed much — he’s a teenager trapped in a man’s body. He greets Dolores warmly, happy to see a familiar face, and they chat while he butchers huge slabs of bloody, raw meat. (The man-child knows how to work a knife — how foreboding!)
While the pair puff and pass a joint together in Luis’ apartment below the shop, Luis spirals into a full-blown panic attack about the future of his business. Dolores calms him down by massaging his neck to relieve the tension and shares her dreams of becoming a masseuse.
Seemingly under the spell of her magic hands, Luis asks Dolores to stay with him. He said he’s thought about her a lot since she went away, which Dolores finds a bit odd, considering they were never all that close. But since she has no other options, she gladly accepts the offer.
She goes to sleep peacefully in Luis’ dead dad’s bed, as present-day Dolores reminds us with a voice-over that a string of violent killings will soon disrupt the unassuming basement oasis.
What did you think of the series premiere? Grade Episode 1 below!
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