The one thing that has kept me on this “American Horror Story” rollercoaster is the fact that this season is only 10 episodes long.
I wasn’t a fan when “American Horror Story: My Roanoke Nightmare” kicked off, but found the premise intriguing enough to stick along for the ride. I was (initially) rewarded for my patience. Things picked up steam leading into “Chapter 5’s” “twist” finale, which set up the sixth episode revealing that its predecessors were an actual documentary edited together in full. “Chapter 6” and last night’s “7” are all about the documentary crew filming a sequel, with the actual Roanoke victims returning to the house that haunted them. The concept is strong, but the execution went to shit last night. It was so awful that, if there weren’t only three episodes left, I would have canceled the series off my DVR.
The one thing that the filmmakers got right is something that I celebrated after the previous episode; all of the legends told in the first five episodes were gentle interpretations compared to the very grotesque real spooks. The nurses were as disturbing as they were unrelenting, while in last night’s episode we see Scathach’s (Lady Gaga) true form, as well as the Butcher, both vile and revolting. That’s about as good as the episode got, as for whatever reason the filmmakers decided to go full found footage with it. While I’m a found footage champion, the execution was so poor that it’s clear that the filmmakers had no clue what the fuck they were doing. The biggest red flag, for those paying attention, is how often the characters reference the cameras. Rule #1 in making a found footage film is to keep the camera references to a minimum. Rule #2 is to have an actual reason to be filming, which the majority of characters in “American Horror Story” didn’t have. “Chapter 7” was a sloppy mess of astoundingly amateur writing and filmmaking that turned a television revelation into a piss-poor copycat of bad found footage movies. The biggest strike, however, is that it wasn’t scary…at all. In fact, it felt like they were all trying way too hard to be crazy and weird, which has become the staple of the “American Horror Story” franchise (it’s a bad case of the “look-at-me’s”).
I hated last night’s episode so much that I’m not sure I’ll return next season.Still, Ryan Murphy has me curious as to what the “Chapter 10” “double twist” is… so, good or bad, I’ll be sticking around until the very end.
Here’s a look at next week’s found footage debacle.