Editorials
The Best Episode of “American Horror Story” Was Everything “Roanoke” Failed To Be
Can we just bring Pepper back? Please?
In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that I’ve never been a big fan of “American Horror Story.” I try to at least give each new season a chance, but I must admit that I have not seen every single episode of every single season. If that means that my overall opinion of the show is invalid, then so be it. But what I have seen is the entirety of “American Horror Story: Roanoke” – the season finale, at the time of writing this post, airs tonight. And my main issue with the found footage-inspired season is the very same issue that has prevented me from sticking through most of the show’s seasons.
Based on what I’ve seen, “American Horror Story” is less about story and more about creepy images being thrown at a wall in the hopes that some of them will stick and get people talking – obviously this is working out pretty well for FX, despite my own personal feelings. True to form, in nine complete episodes of “American Horror Story: Roanoke,” the show’s writers have thus far failed to make me care about anyone or anything in it; with each new “twist,” the season has only become more convoluted and, well, less interesting. We’ve now seen three different sets of characters go through the same exact motions, and the story has been stretched so thin that I’m not sure how we even made it to ten episodes.
Mind you, “Roanoke” has mostly been a whole lot more restrained than previous seasons – I only made it through one episode of “Hotel” because the story had already gone off the tracks within the first half hour – but it still suffers from the same storytelling issue that has plagued the show since the beginning. Despite hanging around them for multiple hours, across a couple months, I felt no semblance of a connection to the mostly unlikable characters, and by the time they were all brutally butchered – for shock value rather than dramatic impact, of course – I found myself once again wondering why I was still watching. Literally nothing I’ve seen in the nine hours of “Roanoke” thus far has made me feel ANYTHING.
Like, literally anything at all.
But there is some good to be found within “American Horror Story.” Fourth season “Freak Show” had many of the same problems that “Roanoke” has suffered from, and it similarly ended with nearly all the characters being killed off – because hey, it’s a horror show and how else will we know it’s a horror show unless everyone dies, right? Sigh. But one thing “Freak Show” pulled off that “Roanoke” wasn’t able to was having at least one episode that made sitting through the whole season feel worthwhile. The tenth episode, titled “Orphans,” was perhaps the very best episode of the FX series to date, and thinking back on it, it exceeded by being everything that “American Horror Story” so rarely aims to be.
The episode mostly centered on pinhead Pepper, a character who had previously been seen in “Asylum” – it was the first time the show directly merged two seasons together, with the events of “Freak Show” taking place a couple years prior to the events of “Asylum.” At the start of the episode, Pepper awakens to find that her husband has passed away in his sleep, and we then head back in time to learn the stories of how Elsa Mars acquired her favorite “monster” and how Pepper met the love of her life. Eventually, Elsa decides that it’s time for Pepper to “go back home,” and she hands her over to her sister. She’s subsequently framed for a murder she did not commit and sent off to Briarcliff Manor.
Highlighted by a gut-wrenching performance from Naomi Grossman, “Orphans” was the finest storytelling that has ever been on display in “American Horror Story,” so full of genuine, raw emotion that it almost felt like it belonged in a different series entirely. Written by James Wong, the incredible hour of television put aside all the show’s trademark style and shock in favor of story and substance, and it was so good that it added a previously un-present emotional depth to the season as a whole. “Freak Show” had touched upon the theme of Elsa’s “monsters” not actually being monsters at all, but it wasn’t until “Orphans” that we truly saw just how much love they were capable of giving and receiving. The episode wore its heart on its sleeve, and the humanity on display was nothing short of beautiful and absolutely heartbreaking.
I cried throughout the entire episode, and I get misty-eyed just thinking about it.
But here we are. It’s been two years since “Orphans” blew me away and had me reaching for the tissues, and not since December 17th, 2014 have I ever again, while watching “American Horror Story,” felt even an iota of what I felt on that night – certainly not at any point during “Roanoke,” which I’ve been completely detached from since the beginning. Granted, I’m not demanding that a horror TV show make me cry every week, but to feel absolutely nothing at all over the course of nine full episodes of any show is the single biggest problem a series can have. And I can’t help but wonder. Do the show’s writers not know how to tell a good story, or is storytelling just not something “AHS” is interested in?
Maybe it’s time they remove the word “story” from the title altogether.
But this. Now this is what storytelling looks like…
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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