Something still lurks in the shadows, but it’s starting to show itself.
This American Horror Story review contains spoilers.
American Horror Story: Season 6, Episode 2
After last week’s throwback-palooza, it felt like the witching hour for American Horror Storyto start shedding some light, battery-powered or otherwise, on what exactly was in those woods. Flashlights can only go so far. While a raging bonfire lit up a scene of torture and human sacrifice led by Kathy Bates’ master of ceremonies, a character possibly even more wicked than Season 3’s sadistic Madme LaLaurie, the plot was still left mostly in the dark.
By the way, Lady Gaga is still MIA.
Season 6 continues to be haunted by horror flicks past, with a neverending parade of Blair Witch Project, Wicker Man, SawandThe Shining references that keep repeating like bad flashbacks. While all these reenacted movie fragments looked like more of an homage meant to revive the series from its grave in the first episode, the recurring stick dolls and pig heads add little to the mostly buried plot as it drags itself out in a desperate attempt to tantalize us.
The ghosts themselves are still throwing the same bloody knives around and startling the living awake in the middle of the night with indigestion moaning. It’s more like an atmospheric Halloween CD at this point. Half the episode was a soundtrack of strange noises that either had someone bolting out of bed with a flashlight in hand or someone running around frantically shouting for a husband or a wife or a daughter they were praying still had his or her head on. Kind of like the last episode, petty poltergeist tantrums tend to lose their fear factor after the first round of flying objects.
The now-infamous REDRUM redux, in which a gaggle of deranged elder care nurses couldn’t even kill enough victims to spray-paint all six letters of MURDER on the wall, was a nightmare. They couldn’t even win at their own twisted game with a psychopathic Jack Torrance smile. The only redeeming quality about it was that the letters at least dripped like blood. I wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised if a horrified Stephen King had suddenly burst out of that same wall screaming (or yawning) at a high enough volume to wake the corpses. Speaking of cryptic words, the elusive CROATOAN seems to have ghosted.
Take the Den of Geek 2016Reader Survey for a Chance to Win a $100 Amazon Voucher Right Here!
The angels of death (who briefly showed up as apparitions in the last episode) and their party-store tribute to the reigning king of horror did little more than lead to a dusty old police file on their sudden disappearance and a mention that they were swallowed by some force in the house even more demonic than their murderous antics. But we know that already. Not to mention that they’re still hanging around in the hallways. We know that too. This “big reveal” only confirms what we already know from the last week’s episode—everyone say it with me now—something in that house wants to kill you.
There are a few hazy glimpses of the phantoms of those vanished Roanoke colonists who were probably the same ones running that grisly Sawmeets Wicker Manmeets Lord of the Flies shindig in the woods before (whether they were sacrificing to malicious spirits or the spirits of classic horror films remains to be seen). While we obviously know what they want (to kill you, of course), why they want it remains nebulous. It must be a reason powerful enough to make Lee’s daughter Laurel feel compelled to hand her doll over to a not-so-imaginary friend who wants to “stop the blood”, and you know how little girls feel about their dolls. Anything that makes a kid part with a toy that might as well be glued to her hip is serious. Why the butchery ever happened in the first place three hundred and something years ago is an unsolved mystery that’s left a dark forest and a dusty house, but not so much as a bloody fingerprint.
American Horror Storyisn’t dead yet. The dark atmospheric magic is still there. Questions haunt me enough to keep following the living, the dead and the undead into the woods. Maybe what looks like the ghost of a plot is a plot device in itself. There are glimpses of raw terror in both fire and shadow, which flash before your eyeballs and vanish too soon, but there is still plenty potential for nightmare fodder so long as the next few episodes start to unearth some bones.
