‘The Horror of Dolores Roach’ isn’t quite the killer concept it could be

Review by Brian Lowry, CNN

(CNN) — Having followed the dizzying path from one-woman play to Spotify podcast to Amazon series, “The Horror of Dolores Roach” flips the gender and venue on “Sweeney Todd,” becoming the latest show built around a serial killer. Yet the fact that its protagonist sort of stumbles into that avocation doesn’t make it more pleasant, or the show feel less derivative.

Justina Machado portrays the title character, who emerges from a 16-year-prison stint eager to find the drug dealer-boyfriend whose actions put her there, and desperate to get her life back on track. Alas, her plan to work as a masseuse – operating out of the basement of an old friend named Luis (Alejandro Hernandez) who runs an empanada shop – takes an abrupt turn when she kills someone, and Luis finds an unexpected use for the body.

Adapted by the play’s creator, Aaron Mark, and produced by horror factory Blumhouse, the series features plenty of not-for-the-squeamish gore. Dropping all eight episodes at once (the better to binge), its most significant device is a familiar one, spending much of its time inside Dolores’ head as she narrates her story.

“I am not a bad person” and “I don’t want to be a serial killer!” she insists to herself, never mind the corpses that keep piling up. Plus, there’s her understandable queasiness about the whole cannibalism thing.

The tone and style of “The Horror of Dolores Roach” can’t help but evoke comparisons to the creatively fading “You,” down to the wry narration, and it’s worth noting Amazon already has one series this year with a homicidal female protagonist, the more ambitious “Swarm,” which is progress perhaps on some weird level. Comparisons aside, the flashback format – swiping from “Sweeney” and the Washington Heights location – give “Roach” its own distinct flavors.

Yet even the self-referential notes in the series – some quite amusing, like a mention of “That musical with that lady from ‘Murder, She Wrote’” – can’t help “Dolores Roach” from joining a too-long roster of shows that, one way or another, prod the audience to walk a mile in the killer’s shoes, with Peacock’s “Based on a True Story” as another recent streaming example.

After starring in the “One Day at a Time” reboot, Machado sinks her teeth into this meaty role – the Demon Masseuse of Washington Heights – which, given how the first season concludes, practically begs for a second.

Dolores is fond of telling clients that when it comes to massage artistry, she has “magic hands.” If only “The Horror of Dolores Roach” possessed enough magic to shape its mix of dark comedy and horror into something that felt wholly worthy of the commitment, instead of cooking up a show that falls short of the killer concept that it could have been.

“The Horror of Dolores Roach” premieres July 7 on Amazon’s Prime Video.

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