American Horror Stories- Aura

By starrymag | August 5, 2022

By: Kelly Kearney

 

 

 

When new home-owners Bryce and Jaslyn are stalked through their security door cam, traumas from the past come flooding back to the present and threaten their happy and safe new life. Could it be a hacker, a stalker, or something otherworldly terror? The latest “American Horror Stories” episode asks the question are we being too paranoid these days, or are we not paranoid enough? Let’s ring this episode’s bell and see…

 

Safety First

 

Home security systems have dominated the market for years and in Mountain View Place, doorbell cameras from the company Aura are flying off the shelves. Paranoid or not, knowing who’s at your door before you open it gives some people peace of mind. Jaslyn (Gabourey Sidibe) isn’t so sure she agrees with the man at the store claiming the door camera she’s eyeing saved his life from all the murderers beyond his porch, but she and her husband Bryce (Max Greenfield) are moving into a new house and it’s better to be safe than sorry. Later, Bryce questions the new Aura she purchased, but Jaslyn says it was on sale for two hundred dollars  He’s having a hard time believing that’s true and reminds her that they’ve moved to this gated community per her idea, and pay an HOA to employ a guard to keep the crime out. They don’t even have porch pirates, so why would they need an Aura? He knows this is anxiety-driven but his biggest complaint is the cost because they hadn’t factored it into their tight budget which is strained until her online jewelry store goes live. Feeling guilty, Jaslyn apologizes for her anxiety which we learn stems from some sort of attack when she was a child. 

In a flashback we see a masked intruder entering her childhood home. The real-life boogieman approaches Jaslyn in her bed; shushing the young girl quiet and sending her under the covers in terror. Seconds later gunshots ring out from what we can assume was her parent’s bedroom. Whatever happened in that house ended in a trauma she couldn’t fully bounce back from. It’s because of her past. We see Bryce drop the money conversation and instead pick up a hammer to install the door cam. On the surface Jaslyn’s husband appears to be a decent guy, but whether or not it’s him or this homogeneous neighborhood – something seems off. It’s as if Jaslyn walked into a Jordan Peele remake of Paranormal Activity. Something is lurking behind those manicured lawns and it’s giving off a deadly aura. 

 

Knock-Knock…Don’t Open the Door

 

Next, we see the happy couple jumping into home ownership and turning their empty house into a home. The process offers up an interesting glimpse into Bryce’s personality. He suffers from OCD, but strangely enough it only seems to be an issue when his wife tries to do something. Even placing books on a shelf is wrong and he can’t help but correct her at every turn. It is annoying, but she doesn’t dwell on it because she just got her first online order! Her business is picking up and isn’t long before she’s up late into the night making orders for new customers. But she isn’t the only one awake – the Aura is always watching. That nosey round light hears every conversation and spies on every romantic moment like some sort of online voyeur. And, since this is a horror show (see title), we know this can’t be good. 

After Bryce cuts a make-out session short to run back to work, Jaslyn gets an Aura alert and checks the door only to be scared back inside by a growling raccoon. A few minutes later it chimes again only this time she sees an older man (pale as death) pleading with her to open the door. “I need to see you, Jaslyn,” he calmly explains, but he doesn’t look like your average grandpa so she refuses. That’s when the creep starts banging on the door and jiggling the doorknob while singing her name! She calls the police and Bryce rushes home just as their neighbor Hwan (Vince Yap) shows up with his own security camera footage. The view from Jaslyn and Bryce’s front door only shows the scurrying raccoon and soon after the police . Bryce shakes his head as if he assumed his wife was letting her anxiety get the better of her, but Jaslyn knows what she saw. Later that night in bed Jaslyn lays terrified as her husband disregards her experience and blames it on a bad dream brought on by her past. She does admit she can’t stop seeing the masked man from her childhood and how he tied up her parents. Maybe he’s right and this was all a dream?

 

Is it This a Dream or a Real-life Nightmare?

 

The dream debate ends when a series of notifications alert the couple to the same creepy man Jas saw from the previous night. Again, he asks for “Sweet Jaslyn” to open the door, and Bryce can’t believe it. Before he takes a fire poker to this pasty-faced boomer he calls Hwan again to ask him what he sees on his camera and, again, he says nothing! Someone is playing games and now Bryce is convinced someone hacked their Aura. The only time they’ve seen this man is through the security app, so it must be a hacker pulling a prank on them. 

The following morning Jas is consumed with YouTube videos of Aura pranks – many of which turned out to be real. Bryce laughs that off and says he rebooted the cameras and changed the passwords so everything should be fine. But everything isn’t fine because Jaslyn remembered where she recognized the man from – he was the overly friendly janitor at her high school. Mr. Hendricks (Joel Swetow) was his name and he had developed an unhealthy obsession with her from putting candy in her locker, polishing her desk and (just like the guy at the door) leaving her notes addressed to “Sweet Jaslyn.” After she graduated it was rumored that he was institutionalized and later released; however, Bryce isn’t buying any of this. He reminds her about the hack but she knows in her gut that stalker-janitor was real. 

That night while logging in to her computer she sees Hendricks pop up on her blank screen. When she flips around to see if he’s behind her, she’s alone and there is no sign of the man. All of this prompts her to make the trek back home to talk to Hendricks’ only living relative – his sister (Nancy Linehan Charles). Jas plays it off like she’s planning a reunion for the school’s Alumni Association and says they’re interested in inviting the school’s custodian to the party. The sister (also creepy) invites her inside for a cup of tea and explains she hasn’t seen her brother since he recently took off to parts unknown. He’s disappeared before. In fact, she says when he is home he’s so wrapped up in his computers she hardly notices him. Jaslyn asks her for a photo of her brother for a reunion yearbook and once she finds one her suspicions are confirmed: he’s the man from her security camera. 

Once she’s back home she calls Bryce and he agrees Hendricks is their hacker. He tells her to keep the door looked until he gets home. Minutes later the Aura alerts her to the old man on her porch again asking to get inside. He somehow convinces her he just wants to talk, so she faces her fears and swings open the door only to find nobody there yet when she goes back inside Dayle Hendricks is sanding hunched over in her house! He says he only came to apologize for making her feel unsafe as a child. He was sick( convinced he loved her) and for that he is sorry. Before he turns to leave Jaslyn offers up her own apology for how she and her friends treated him. He cries and his tears turn to blood as he crumples to the ground in a pile of dust. Later, Jas hears on the news about a missing person, Dale Hendricks, found floating in a river. He had been in there for an estimated three weeks! 

Vengeance

 

When Bryce gets home from work, Jas doesn’t mention her encounter with Dayle Hendricks because a new notification pops up on the Aura and it leaves her questioning her sanity all over again. This time it’s a woman claiming she was at the local park and needs help. She appears confused and injured and Jaslyn is ready to open the door to help. Bryce has other ideas and rips the phone from her hand and screams at the hacker to drop dead. The woman on the porch disappears and in a fury Bruce rips the Aura off the door. Warranty be damned!  

Wanting to know more about who this woman could be, Jas goes to the park and notices a bench with a memorial plaque dedicated to a Mary Jean Burkett (Lily Rohren). After a quick Google search she finds out that Mary Jean died in a hit and run and she just happens to look exactly like the scared woman from the night before! Jaslyn heads home to tell Bryce what she found out and starts to wonder if she isn’t the target of this hack, it’s him. She shows him a video of a man who believes the Aura is some sort of quantum portal between the realm of the living and the dead– a doorway connecting the two worlds. Bryce laughs off this sci-fi conspiracy but Jas comes clean and tells him she spoke to Mr. Hendricks and the fact he had been floating in the river for weeks prior to him popping up on their doorstep, proves this haunting theory could be legit. So, who is Mary Jean Burkett and why would she be haunting Bryce? The woman is at the door again because Jas fished the Aura out of the trash and reinstalled it. “Who is she?” she asks, and Bryce finally breaks down and admits the truth-she was his pregnant fiance. He broke off their engagement then he found out about the baby. He wanted Mary Jean to have an abortion and she refused–psuhing away frim his angry grasp and walking directly into a speeding truck. She was severely injured and needed help but Bryce took the easy and homicidal way by stepping on her throat and breaking her neck! He’s a murderer and now that Jas knows the truth he turns on her. He doesn’t get very far thanks to Mary Jean, who somehow fills Jas with the power of death, turning him into dust like Hendricks. 

Three months later Jas is moving into her new apartment when the landlord tells her he just installed her Aura. The device is mandatory in all the apartments since it keeps the insurance payments down. Jas starts to panic because she knows what’s coming and it isn’t long before Bryce is screaming through her app to get in. Nobody escapes the all-knowing eye of Aura.