“American Horror Story” embraces nostalgia and slasher iconography as it heads back to the ‘80s for its latest blood-soaked season.
“I hear that serial killers are more active in the months that are hot…”
American Horror Story is still one of the best magic tricks and brainwashing acts on television. Every year, it hooks in viewers, both old and new, with some radical new premise (even when keeping that premise a secret can be marketing in itself) and every season it rather quickly goes off the rails and turns into the messiest kind of messes. Perhaps that’s why we love the show on some level. We should know better at this point, but part of being a horror fan is trudging into something that by all means looks like trash, but hoping for the best. This season of American Horror Story doesn’t look like trash and in fact, it’s trying to lure hardcore horror fans more than it ever has before.
Reckless summer camps are just one of those locations that mesh together with the horror genre so well. Films like Friday the 13th or Sleepaway Camp largely work as well as they do because they embrace the silly setting so well, short shorts and all. However, not only is this season of American Horror Story set at a summer camp where there’s a killer on the loose, but it’s specifically set back in 1984, a year that’s especially important for the horror genre (Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Silent Night, Deadly Night, and Children of the Corn all came out in 1984). American Horror Story: 1984 honors this formative year for the genre by creating a pastiche of slasher films that puts all of these bloody pictures into a blender and it makes for a wonderfully fun time.
Ryan Murphy and his team at American Horror Story have always attempted to remix classic horror films, regardless of the season’s theme, but they’re looking at a tall task this season. The scenario they’ve created for themselves at Camp Redwood and with the murderous Mr. Jingles is a dream come true, but films like The Final Girls have already reflexively approached this subject matter and done so incredibly well, at that. AHS: 1984 will really need to work hard to make Camp Redwood as iconic as other slasher camps and while it’s still far too soon to tell, the work done in “Camp Redwood” shows that they may be up to the task.
Before this season gets into its 1980s goodness, it presents a small primer that’s set back in the ’70s at Redwood that helps establish that a gruesome serial killer has wreaked havoc upon the camp in the past. It’s a very satisfying, extreme cold open that would definitely make Jason Voorhees smile out of appreciation. “Camp Redwood” initially looks like it may be a place where Emma Roberts’ Brooke and her friends can escape their pasts and start anew for the summer. It doesn’t take very long for everyone involved to realize that something isn’t right here and that perhaps this camp is the exact place that they need to be in order to confront the lives that they have run away from.
AHS: 1984’s tone is so much brighter, lighter, and stylized than previous seasons of American Horror Story (God, the opening credits this year are amazingly on point) that this almost feels like a stealth season three of Scream Queens, especially with Emma Roberts leading the pack as Brooke Thompson. Make no mistake, this is a good thing, and at least this first episode embraces that show’s gleeful murder-happy impulses. Neon titles fly across the screen to help identify the cast and it’s clear that servicing up the ‘80s is just as important to this season as paying respect to the horror that fills the decade. As the nostalgia-drenched advertisements for this season have highlighted, big hair, fuzzy legwarmers, and pastel outfits are unavoidable this year.
Roberts’ Brooke shares the spotlight here with Billie Lourd’s Montana Duke, a confident aerobics instructor who wants to become the world’s best in the field. The rest of the core cast is rounded out by the picturesque Xavier Plympton (Cody Fern) and his buddies, Ray Powell (DeRon Horton) and Chet Clancy (Gus Kenworthy). Glee’s Matthew Morrison also gets to make his American Horror Story debut this season and immediately stands out as Trevor Kirchner, a sexed out mustachioed camp counselor who Montana has her eye on.
Montana is the more outgoing of the characters and she helps Roberts’ meekish Brooke attempt to come out of her shell over the summer. Brooke is more reserved than the characters that Roberts is used to playing in American Horror Story, but it’s safe to say that her proper demeanor has a lot to do with the trauma that she’s survived in the past. Brooke’s encounter with the actual Night Stalker, Richard Ramirez, seems like a pivotal piece of the character’s history, but then it starts to look like everyone houses secrets that make them the ideal individuals for this camp.
“It’s L.A. Do any of us really know each other?” gets said in jest at one point, but it becomes a thought that’s truer than any of these people may understand. Everyone neatly fits into genre stereotypes, but as more time goes on they appear to be deeper than they initially let on. With a cast that’s not overly large, it should be interesting to see how many of these characters will be future Mr. Jingles victims and who will get a chance to develop and grow.
Someone that’s already done a great deal of growing is Margaret Booth (Leslie Grossman), the camp’s owner. Margaret pushes the camp’s chaste, religious undertone and the copious rules that accompany it. Margaret occupies a difficult position as she’s actually someone who survived Mr. Jingles’ slaughter at Camp Redwood back in the 1970s (and shares a survivor connection with Brooke, in a sense), but she’s also responsible for putting the killer away and acts as a major link to the camp’s past. This premiere pushes Margaret’s obsessive attitude and she already looks like a good contender for someone who could potentially orchestrate new murders, if there is a whodunit aspect present this year.
Speaking of which, the bulk of “Camp Redwood” takes place at the eponymous summer camp, but there’s also an extremely Halloween-esque sequence set at the nearby mental asylum that Benjamin Richter—Mr. Jingles—escapes from (even though his get-up totally channels I Know What You Did Last Summer). John Carroll Lynch‘s casting as the vicious Mr. Jingles may be a little on the nose for American Horror Story, but he already does impressive work as the lumbering character. It’s also fun to see just how much the series goes all-in with its Halloween allusions. The doctor that’s supposed to be looking after Richter is basically identical to Dr. Loomis. It’s not trying to hide the obvious parallels. This is a season that wants you to drunkenly shout out every slasher reference that you can correctly identify through the carnage.
“Camp Redwood” is patient, takes its time, and values the opportunity to explore its characters before they’re inundated with a bunch of young campers. The premiere’s main goal is to introduce the camp and tell campfire stories about the horrors that have plagued Redwood’s past and the alleged history of the deranged man who would become the infamous Mr. Jingles. This episode has fun playing into these various tropes, but then deconstructing them and going against the norm. ”Camp Redwood” has a rather fixed perspective, but it still finds the time to already throw some eccentric plot devices into the mix, like Satanists or an injured stranger who suffers from amnesia. As fun as this season may be, clearly it won’t be immune to some of the clunkier plot points that are prone to happen in this series.
“Camp Redwood” doesn’t try to overstuff itself and it creates a satisfying, above average season premiere. The episode plants the necessary seeds for what’s to come (it’s a fun idea to potentially have multiple killers out there and in the mix) and looks stunning at the same time. The outdoor cinematography of the camp is gorgeous, the synth-y score is perfect, and the aesthetic is totally nailed. There’s actually a pretty inspired sequence where the episode juxtaposes Brooke running for survival from Mr. Jingles with the torch lighting ceremony from the 1984 Olympics. These are the kind of visuals that I want from this season.
“Camp Redwood” is a strong, exciting way to kick off the season, but a commendable premiere has turned into a tradition that’s no barometer for the overall quality of the season. There are fun characters, a great setting, and a killer that’s actually frightening. If American Horror Story: 1984 can actually stay focused and not do random detours to things like a summer camp from Russia in the 1950s, then this could potentially be one of the show’s best seasons yet. It’s a delicate balance between finely toasting a marshmallow and setting the whole thing ablaze into a burnt, inedible crisp.
