American Horror Story – Chapter 1

By starrymag | September 17, 2016

By: Caitlin Walsh

 

From the beginning, Season Six has already proved it’s not the same “American Horror Story” you’ve grown to know (well, as much as you can know and expect from an ever changing show). There’s no opening theme and everything is a little less flashy than its grown to be. This isn’t a season of artistic set designs and intricate costumes. It’s not one long Lady Gaga music video (for better or for worse). Instead, it’s (in some ways) gotten back to the feel of Murder House. It’s documentary style, it’s new and it’s intriguing to say the least.

The story begins with Shelby Miller (Lily Rabe) and her husband Matt (Andre Holland). They’re the “real” Shelby and Matt Miller, telling their horror story – their Roanoke story. The dramatic reenactments of their horrific tale are played by Sarah Paulson (as Shelby) and Cuba Gooding Jr. (as Matt), one of a few exciting additions to the cast especially after his powerful O.J. Simpson performance earlier this year in Murphy’s “American Crime Story.” We see Shelby and Matt leaving Los Angeles after a tragic attack on Matt, which left him with a broken orbital socket and some serious bruises and Shelby, just newly pregnant, losing the baby. They pack up and move back to North Carolina, closer to where Matt grew up. After a stroll in the woods, they stumble upon a beautiful old home, grand and in need of some love. They beat out a bunch of redneck hicks in an auction, get the house for a steal and everything seems picture perfect.

 

Hint: it’s not. (But really, what would you expect from an abandoned creepy house in the middle of the damn woods? And the only other bidders are some mean old hillbillies? C’mon, Millers.)

 

Bump in the night

 

It doesn’t take long, admittedly (for Shelby at least) to start getting bad vibes. A noise here and there, some bad air maybe. And on one of their first nights, when her and Matt are celebrating their new home and bed, they hear something. In typical horror movie fashion, Matt runs outside to investigate. Naturally, something is throwing things around and being just generally aggressive. So yeah, Matt, I’m sure it’s just prejudiced hillbillies, not monsters. Yeah right.

 

It’s Shelby who really bears the brunt of all the scares going on. After doing her morning yoga, she notices what seems like a hailstorm – until she steps outside and realizes it’s not hail, it’s teeth falling from the sky. Unusual in the real world, but as per horror usual, they just write it off as maybe seeing something, maybe it was stress, Shelby’s trauma or whatever have you. But could that have really happened?

 

This also cues the perfect timing for Matt to leave on a business trip. As a traveling salesman, it’s really his whole thing, you know? Shelby is ready for some alone time, if you ask her. She’s used to this routine of theirs. She’s used to some days by herself, thinking it’ll help her settle in and calm down. She also thinks a glass of wine and trip to the outdoor tub will help, but when someone (something?) shoves her under the water and tries to drown her…Well, it’s not exactly the deluxe spa package she was hoping for.

 

And still, the cops and her husband write her off. The cops can’t find any footprints, any real sign of a struggle. Matt, while angry at them, has a hard time swallowing what she says, too. He believes that it was people with pitchforks and torches and they were gone by the time she came up for air and got her bearings. But Matt buys it, rationalizing it as the hillbillies and now Shelby finally is admitting what she’s been feeling: she doesn’t want to live there anymore.

 

Something strange in the neighborhood

 

The next morning, Matt wakes up to a skinned, dead pig on their doorstep. Shelby’s been through enough he thinks so he buries it in the woods, keeps it a secret and that’s that, right? He sets up security cameras around the property, connected to his phone, wanting to be able to stay on top of this. He calls in his sister to come stay with them. Ex-detective and newly sober Lee (played by Adina Porter, a stellar surprise new cast member and in the reenactments played by the incomparable Angela Bassett) may be down on her luck and may not like Shelby much, but she’ll come to the rescue, anyway.

 

That night, with Matt gone away again and Lee and Shelby getting some less than civil sister bonding time, things only escalate. While Shelby is preparing dinner, she hears a noise, goes to investigate – and comes back to find her cutting knife moved, stabbed into the meat that’s cooking across the room. She’s less than thrilled. As Lee says, “My brother married one jumpy bitch.”

 

After more tension builds between the two women, Shelby accuses Lee of messing with her. Lee asks her not to drink wine around her while she’s barely holding onto her sobriety. She then goes to bed, calling it a night. That is until an empty wine bottle rolls into her room, something she thinks is an insensitive joke by Shelby. Really, it is the start of the night that gets the whole story started.

 

Matt, from a few hours away, sees people with torches and pitchforks outside the house thanks to his security cameras. Unfortunately, his complete lack of faith in the police means instead of calling them he just frantically watches and then heads there on his own. Meanwhile, the ladies are fighting, shouting at each other, until they hear someone in the house and run to the basement where they find an old TV playing a home video of a man running through the woods. The also see the pig-like looking monster he comes across. If you hadn’t already gotten there, this was the moment that had you asking: what the actual heck is going on?

 

While down there, they finally catch sight of the pitchforks, torches and attackers, staying down and hidden while they wait it out. Once they go upstairs, checking it out, they don’t find anyone. But they do find twig figures hanging from the hallway, everywhere, a warning or a bad omen. Regardless, it’s not good. It sure as hell isn’t safe and it’s just downright unsettling.

 

XX

 

Even after getting home and dealing with the cops (who write up a vandalism report and call it a night – really grade A police work) and seeing the figures, the video and all, Matt still has it in his head that this is just that “white trash” group trying to run them out. Even Lee thinks maybe, maybe he’s right. And Shelby, poor Shelby, is the only one appropriately freaking out.

 

Fed up with that fact, Shelby runs. She takes the car and drives off, but doesn’t get far before she hits someone on the foggy road, sending them flying. This only leads to her chasing them into the woods to try and convince them to go to the hospital. (Shelby, when they ran off into the woods after all the crap you’ve seen, it might be time to just leave this one be.)

 

She gets panicked and lost in the woods, not able to find her way out and back to her car. It’s bad, I won’t lie. And when she finds more stick figures hanging from trees and trips only to find the ground moving, almost breathing? Yeah, something more than white trash resides in the woods, me thinks.

 

When she’s surrounded by folks in colonial garb (including Kathy Bates, the woman she hit with her car) and armed with torches and pitchforks all coming towards her, I think she’s got the same idea – that something else is going on in Roanoke County and I’m sticking around to find out.

 

You’ve got me, “American Horror Story.: Let’s do this.