Reviews
“American Horror Story: Delicate” Review – Premiere Delivers Promise, Purpose and Pregnancy Scares
Despite all of American Horror Story’s witches, vampires, murder Santas, and serial killers, the anthology series has always suffered from an identity crisis and focus issues. American Horror Story’s 12th season comes in after what was arguably the series’ strongest season in over a decade that would have made for a powerful, poignant way to conclude the anthology horror series. Instead, American Horror Story: Delicate ventures into risky, overdone territory with this pregnancy body horror drama.
What’s significant about AHS: Delicate is that it features some major firsts for the series. For one, American Horror Story: Delicate is the first season where series creator Ryan Murphy isn’t showrunner. Instead, Hailey Feiffer–a playwright–takes over these duties and writes the entire season. This is also the first time that American Horror Story explicitly adapts source material instead of throwing a bunch of genre tropes and clichés into a blender that gets its top taken off halfway through the season.
AHS: Delicate adapts Danielle Valentine’s novel, Delicate Condition, a cautionary postmodern pregnancy horror story that would be an effective idea two decades ago. Many hold up Rosemary’s Baby as the be-all end-all pregnancy horror movie, but the past decade has showcased comparable horror movies like False Positive, Bed Rest, The Offering, Huesera: The Bone Woman, STARZ’s Dead Ringers, or even something in the vein of a pregnancy home invasion movie, like L’Interiuer. There have largely been diminishing returns on this subject matter, many of which circle around the same ideas and fail to say much new on the topic beyond the idea that women can be just as predatory as men in this fragile, vulnerable field. Feiffer has impressive experience writing on this subject matter and seems like a perfect voice to bring this story to life. That being said, American Horror Story: Delicate faces a tall task to reinvent this popular horror subgenre. Fortunately, it looks like it’s up to the challenge after the encouraging events of the season premiere, “Multiply Thy Pain.”
“Multiply Thy Pain” is largely focused on Anna Victoria Alcott (Emma Roberts), an A-lister who’s finally ready to put parenthood on as high of a pedestal as her career after several failed attempts at IVF treatment. Alcott doesn’t seem to be much of a stretch for Roberts, whose professional trajectory isn’t that dissimilar to her own. Alcott’s hopefulness comes in strong, but progressively wavers when in the face of constant subjugation. Early on in “Multiply Thy Pain,” Anna’s husband, Dex (Matt Czuchry), mansplains IVF procedures, which immediately sets up their skewed power dynamic. Anna lacks any authority or agency despite her celebrity status.
The feelings of invisibility and paranoia that typically consume this horror subgenre crop up with Anna as she deals with a negligent doctor, husband, and world at large who ignore her in favor of the men in her orbit that so obviously know best. It’s a common trait of these types of horror stories, but it’s less cloying here because it’s sadly so true to life. They may be overdone ideas, but it’s because they increasingly populate the world. Further to this point, Anna’s heavy medication and twilight anesthesia poison her confidence so that any odd sight can be dismissed as residual wooziness or “Pregnancy Brain.” These justified forms of gaslighting repeatedly push Anna to question her instincts. This makes for an engaging start to the season, but American Horror Story: Delicate still struggles to explain why Anna deserves to be victimized. Because she pushed back her IVF treatment one day so that she could be on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen? It’s not exactly the same as drinking or smoking while pregnant.
There’s a lot of grim commentary on how children only perpetuate the Earth’s end. They’re the problem, not the solution. Meanwhile, ungrateful kids are glued to the screen of their devices while they make life more difficult for the adults who have paid for it all. It’s a bitter, angry place for this season that runs in complete opposition to Anna’s sheer passion for bringing a life into this world. It quickly establishes a heightened universe that wants its audience to view it in black-and-white extremes. ”Multiply Thy Pain” also deserves credit for the speed at which it operates. This bodes well for the rest of the season’s pacing going forward.
Even the episode’s title, “Multiply Thy Pain,” makes reference to the difficult road that pregnancy sets women down. The title pulls from the epigraph that begins Valentine’s Delicate Condition, which in turn evokes a Bible verse: “Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy pain and thy conception; in pain thou shalt bring forth children…” Genesis 3:16, ASV. This quickly sets American Horror Story: Delicate up for some brutal Old Testament theatrics with not only Anna Alcott, but her entire gender. Denis O’Hare’s Dr. Hill casually remarks during the start of Anna’s IVF treatment that he’s “feeling very optimistic about our chances.” However, the greater worry that begins to overtake Anna–and the audience–is over their chances for what exactly.
So much of “Multiply Thy Pain” rests on Roberts’ shoulders and she doesn’t exactly rise to the occasion. This is far from her best work or most interesting character in a Ryan Murphy production and Kim Kardashian hardly makes for an exciting foil or challenging scene partner. On that note, Kardashian is completely fine as Siobhan. In fact, she’s actually a pretty natural fit for this PR-driven role. However, don’t expect a career-turning performance out of her like American Horror Story has done with other newcomer actors like Lady Gaga back in AHS: Hotel. She’s still bringing more to the table than Cara Delevingne in weird glasses, however.
Anna’s IVF woes present tangible fears, but American Horror Story: Delicate also inundates her mind with toxic imagery. There’s a wealth of broken, bloody egg visuals in this premiere that quite unsubtly turn these restorative images of fresh life into haunting curses. The spider web hair and stitch-mouthed scenes deliver effective, economical scares. They’re simple, creepy, and encouraging for the rest of the season’s set pieces. AHS: Delicate’s opening credits are also better than ever, which shouldn’t be the major takeaway here, but it’s nice to see them really embracing some uncomfortable symbolism.
“Multiply Thy Pain” isn’t afraid to evoke weird, tangential scares like its recurring freaky doll, but in a way that still feels natural to the story instead of just some nonsensical nightmare that provokes the viewer just because. American Horror Story: Delicate works hard to reconcile and justify its creepy iconography. Jessica Yu is one of American Horror Story’s most consistent directors and she sets a striking, sterile visual look for the season in this premiere. The season’s musical score is also low-key one of the premiere’s secret weapons. Melodies echo and reverberate as if these characters are trapped in a womb.
AHS: Delicate introduces some potentially exciting ideas, but it’s still too soon to see where they go and how they’ll play out. One of the most intriguing theories that’s raised in “Multiply Thy Pain” is that Anna’s IVF treatment will somehow implant her with the embryo of Dex’s dead ex-wife, Adeline, so that she can live on through their daughter or some other Frankenstein’s Monster madness. At this point it’s just a fun riff on the first season of Vampire Diaries when it comes to its past lovers and variations on a theme. This is at least more creative than if Anna were simply to give birth to some generic demon spawn (although that seems to be what this anti-pregnancy cult believes).
American Horror Story: Delicate takes off to a methodical, patient start that’s largely occupied with introductory table setting for what’s to come. “Multiply Thy Pain” is a fairly standard American Horror Story season premiere that begins exactly how one would expect. However, AHS: Delicate reflects a lot of early promise and its largely new creative staff means that there are genuine reasons to believe that American Horror Story won’t succumb to the same formulaic mistakes that have defined it for years.
Death Down the Aisle begins with the tantalizing image of a bride, Malorie (Jess Brown), dressed in a wedding dress splattered with blood.
This is a brief (unnecessary) in media res opening before writer Audrey C. Marie jumps the action back to earlier in the day. It’s the day of the wedding, Malorie is preparing to wed Jon (David Alexander) and there’s a whirlwind introduction of wedding guests, many of whom are either family, work associates from Jon’s legal firm, or both.
Most of these relationships aren’t clear until after Jon’s death (this isn’t a spoiler; his death is heavily telegraphed by director Roxanne Boisvert). Only after the murder does it become clear that Death Down The Aisle is primarily interested in exploring red herrings, gossipy busy bodies, and characters making A LOT of phone calls.
Let’s rewind: Malorie is marrying Jon, an older man with an adult daughter, Bridget (Anna Kopacek), who looks nearly the same age as her. Jon works at Stone Legal Services with his brother Zach (Scott Gibson), as well as Malorie’s mother, Pamela (Jayne Heitmeyer) and Zach’s younger girlfriend, Amy (Gracie Callahan).
Each of these characters hand Jon a drink before the wedding begins – Zach – a Scotch, Amy – a coffee, and Pamela – an energy drink. There’s also a mysterious glass of champagne delivered to Malorie’s room that Jon drinks and Boisvert ensures that the audience keeps track of each of them by zooming in each time. This is why it’s no surprise when Jon keels over mid-ceremony, coughs up blood on Malorie’s dress, and immediately croaks.
Naturally it turns out that nearly everyone had a motive to see him dead. Pamela recently quit the firm because Jon wouldn’t confirm her salary; Zach was pushing for a merger with rival Miles (Colin Price) that Jon was unsure about, and the dead man fretted that Amy was a gold digger, so Jon wouldn’t support her promotion, either.
Adding to the too plentiful number of suspects is Malorie’s ex-husband Ryan (Frank Fiola), a recovering addict. Even Jon’s own daughter ends up on the list when it’s revealed that they were fighting in the weeks leading up to his death.
The only one who doesn’t have a motive to kill Jon is Malorie’s best friend Francesca (JaNae Armogan), who works at the wedding venue and thinks she saw something fishy. Naturally she’s killed off before the end of the first act.
What follows is a lot of conversation between characters about the firm, the merger, Malorie and Jon’s relationship, and how everyone is lying to everyone else. The problem is that 90% of these conversations happen via phone or text and few of them are interesting. Marie’s script fails to develop the characters beyond their motive, which means that the majority of the plot developments aren’t particularly engaging because the characters are so shallow.
With so many people and interweaving relationships involved, it’s hard to zero in and identify with anyone. Malorie is clearly meant to be the protagonist because, like most Lifetime films, she assumes the role of investigator, despite the presence of Detective Levine (Christian Paul) on the periphery.
But even she is kept at a distance from the audience. Because we only see a few moments of her relationship with Jon, secrets that the pair were keeping from friends and family don’t carry any emotional resonance when they come to light later in the film. One in particular seems to come out of left field and seemingly only exists to introduce another red herring in order to prolong the mystery for another 20 minutes.
Alas none of the characters get much to do, so none of the performances pop. Kopacek and Callahan look too similar and are styled identically, which sometimes makes it hard to distinguish one from the other. Further issues with casting is that the age disparity between Malorie & Jon and Zach & Amy is never mentioned (neither is Jon’s paternity of Bridget). This may be an ageist observation, but even the fact that Pamela never comments that her daughter was marrying her (Pamela’s) boss seems unusual, especially when Death Down the Aisle regularly suggests that one or more character is a gold digger.
Arguably the film’s biggest issue is that everything circles around the business dealings of the firm, none of which is engaging or interesting (hilariously it’s never even made clear what kind of law they practice!) Without more distinct characters, there’s very little to hang the narrative on.
Unfortunately after a solid opening, Death Down the Aisle gets stuck spinning its wheels, endlessly recycling its red herrings and interminable phone calls between characters. The suspect list is long, but the film’s energy lags through the saggy middle section and the climax can’t bring Death Down the Aisle back to life.
This one could have easily been called “Business Phone Calls”…and that’s not great.
Death Down the Aisle premiered on Lifetime Thursday, June 13.
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