American Horror Stories – Bloody Mary

By: Kelly Kearney

After last week’s gross-out episode, this week’s “American Horror Stories” heads to a sleepover where a mirrored game turns into a cursed bloodbath that leaves shards of glass scattered around the lost dreams of a group of teenage friends. A name uttered into a candlelight mirror unleashes an eye-clawing demon who ties a historical reckoning to humanity’s selfishness and greed. 

Say Her Name

Bloody Mary – a scare story brought to life at teenage sleepovers or an omen from the past back to scratch out the eyes of anyone who dares utter her name? Teenagers Bianca (Quvenzhané Wallis), Elise (Raven Scott), Maggie (Kyla-Drew), and Lena (Kyanna Simone) learn firsthand why you don’t summon the maven of mirrors when they take off to separate rooms to test whether or not Bloody Mary is real or just an urban legend. Rumor has it if her image appears she will tell you your future and grant your most desired wish. And with boy problems, dreams of Yale and neglectful parents, these girls have a lot to wish for. What they didn’t factor into this ritual was what they might be asked to do to make their dreams come true, and you can bet it won’t be pleasant. Right away Bianca, Elise’s brainiac sister, isn’t interested in calling out a ghost who is well-known for scratching the eyes out of anyone who sees her. She is the outcast of the group and her sister is sick of dragging her along and always making excuses for her with their friends. She shames her for giving in to the party game as all the girls light their candles and say the magic words “Bloody Mary…Bloody Mary…Bloody Mary…” To their shocking horror, the woman appears! Ebony skin wrapped in red silk adorned with golden jeweled accents and golden talons for fingernails, Bloody Mary (Dominique Johnson) looks like a queen with the eyes of the devil. Reaching out through the mirror, she grabs Maggie’s face and whispers something about following her orders and all her wishes could come true. When Maggie screams (something she has no recollection of) her friends come barreling through the door to find Bloody Mary raking her eyes into pools of blood. When they hit the lights the horrifying image disappears and Maggie is left confused by why her friends are screaming. What they saw and what she saw were two different things. After all, she has both of her eyes and not a scratch on her. Was it all in their heads? Eventually, Maggie admits she did see something but she isn’t sure what it was. She did see a ghastly peek into her future and was told if she wanted her boyfriend back she must steal nude photos of her ex’s new girlfriend and post them online. If she completes this task in the next few days, her dreams will come true. However, she wasn’t the only one Bloody Mary whispered orders to; all the girls have been tasked with destroying someone’s life so theirs would be blessed. She told Yale hopeful Bianca to accuse her trusted guidance counselor of rape and she will get that coveted acceptance letter. Lena was told if she wants to be the head cheerleader that she should destroy Ann, her competition. Shaken by the entire ordeal, they all make a pact to forget what they saw and chalk it up to a hallucination.

That night when sisters Elise and Bianca return home they’re met by their real-life villain, their abrasive mother, who is entertaining a man and doesnt want her kids around. The harsh woman kicks her kids out – forcing them to sleep in the car and, from what it seems, it wouldn’t be the first time. Luckily, Elise has her younger sister’s back (she always has) and the two settle down for an uncomfortable night. This is when Bianca comes clean and admits she really wants to go to Yale and Elise, always the mom of the two, says she believes she will.  Bianca is a realist though and she knows that no matter how smart she is that it doesn’t necessarily mean a rejection letter won’t land in her mailbox. Knowing their mother is a neglectful mess and the two feel trapped in the horrorshow of their upbringing, it isn’t surprising that Bianca feels tempted by Bloody Mary’s offer. She wants to do something with her life and not disappear like so many who can’t make their educational dreams come true. As the sisters fall asleep, we can see Bloody Mary watching over them in the car’s side mirror. Now that they’ve brought her to the mirror’s edge, she isn’t leaving until they act out her demands. 

She’s Always Watching

The following day at school is a rough one– none of the girls slept and, at least in Lena’s case, it’s affecting her memory. Apparently, she forgot to join her fellow cheerleaders and dress for School Spirit Day and her squad nemesis, Anna (Ryan D. Madison), doesn’t let her forget it. With the lack of sleep it was an easy mistake to make, but “Cheer-Karen” rides Lena pretty hard until she starts to wonder if hurting the harpy isn’t the answer to her Head Cheerleader dreams. 

Over in Science class the topic of the day is reflection and refraction–fitting for what the girls witnessed the night before. The teacher goes on to explain that the Mayans believed reflections were portals into other worlds and when the woman flips the easel over from the chalkboard to the mirrored side, three of the four girls (sans Bianca) shake in terror when they see and hear Bloody Mary demanding they finish what they started when they called out her name. Later, when the three meet up with Bianca to fill her in on what happened, they all start to wonder if they shouldn’t do what the demanding demon wants. Sure, Lena doesn’t want to cripple her mouthy squad mate, but this Bloody Mary isn’t going away and ignoring her could have deadly consequences none of them want to face. She mentions a story her mother told her about a party when she was in high school that ended with the death of a few girls. The ones left alive spent their remaining days in a mental hospital and whether or not that’s a true story doesn’t matter now that they are seeing Bloody Mary on every reflective surface and starting to lose it. Her friends are outraged that she’s even entertaining the idea of hurting Anna, and question why she pushed them to summon Bloody Mary if she knew this was a risk. She admits she thought it was a kid’s ghost story but obviously she was wrong. Now, unfortunately, there is no escaping their fates. They have no other option but to decide if they want to ruin others’ lives to save their own.

After Lena’s admission that she is considering harming Anna to make Bloody Mary go away, Bianca meets with her counselor about her application to Yale. He seems like a decent guy and in her corner; asking her to dig deeper in her application essay if she wants to rise above the nepo-babies and legacy kids and carve out a place for herself in the halls of the Ivy League institution. When he reaches across his desk to comfort her with a touch on her hand, she notices Bloody Mary staring at them through the mirror on his office wall. She also sees her counselor hanging by a noose; a possible vision of what’s to come if she follows through with her pact.

While the other girls are being tormented by the constant reminder of that ill-fated party, Elise hits the library to research the origins of Bloody Mary and what she discovers isn’t what she was expecting. It’s the story of an escaped slave tricked by a fake stop at what she thought was the Underground Railroad. Sadly, it wound up being a slave trader who held her, her son and others captive until she could negotiate the right price. The woman, Mrs. Worth (Maggie Carney), lived in a cabin nearby and was a rumored serial killer long before the birth of that term. She, along with her sidekick (a slave she imprisoned since practically birth) took great pleasure in killing the leftovers she couldn’t sell off to the highest bidder. The story is a horridly gaping wound ripped into the fabric of a nation that prides itself on morality and liberty. It’s another case of freedom for some, but none offered to people like Bloody Mary. Elise assumes something in this story can help them defeat the curse, but she better hurry up with that fix because Lena is ready to end this pact once and for all!

In the locker room before the pep rally Lena has a vision of her nagging squadmate with a broken neck and it rattles her to her core. Sure, Elise is trying to figure out a way to rid themselves of this curse but the girls are starting to lose it and Lena can’t take it anymore. She takes off in uniform to the gym, with her friends right behind her hoping she doesn’t do what she was ordered to. Thankfully, she has a change of heart when she makes the split-second decision to catch her nemesis in a free-fall from the top of a pyramid formation rather than let her go crashing to the floor and inevitably breaking her neck. The choice to spare the girl forces Lena to run from the gym in tears knowing she may have just sealed her own fate. 

Like Lena, it seems taht Maggie is also ready to pull the trigger on the nude photo drop when she uncovers a sex tape River’s (JJ Batteast) new girlfriend recently made with another guy! Maggie feels justified in releasing the content to save her ex-flame from humiliation, but Bianca pleads with her not to do it because the nudes could ruin this young girl’s life. With a lot of “should she or shouldn’t she,” Maggie begrudgingly agrees to wait on the photo and video release, but like Lena her reluctance to pull the trigger is ultimately her undoing. By the next day both girls wind up murdered with their eyes scratched out with Bianca and Elise, tragically and unforgettably, finding Maggie before her parents do. Now they know the truth – there is no escaping this curse. They either have to give Bloody Mary what she wants or suffer the same consequences as their friends.

Mirrors of the Past Reflect Our True Nature

With Maggie and Lena dead and their own time running out, Elise takes Bianca to Margaret Worth’s cabin to finally end this thing once and for all. Mirrors hanging from the trees surrounding the dilapidated home set the mood for the final fight, not to mention a surprising twist nobody (especially Bianca) saw coming. When the sisters summon Bloody Mary the first thing she does is ask Elise if she brought her what she asked for. The question confuses Bianca, who was told Elise somehow avoided the figure in the mirror and was never ordered into this pact. She lied to the one person who trusted her the most and she did so for her own selfish reasons. On the night of the summoning, Elise asked for an escape from the life she felt trapped in; replaced with one of comfort, fame and fortune far away from their mother. Bloody Mary agreed to grant her that wish if she collected the blood of three innocents and brought her the dagger she used to kill Margaret Worth. The truth hits Bianca like a wildfire in the darkest of nights as she realizes her sister killed their friends and now she’s planning to kill her too! Before Elise can finish apologizing for her murder spree, Bianca takes off running but doesnt get far before her sister catches up to her and the two girls fight to the death, with Bianca getting in the final defensive blow to the eye that stops her sister’s rampage. Devastated by what she’s done, Bloody Mary decides to tell Bianca why she asked for the offerings and how she became trapped behind the mirror. It all began when Margaret Worth manipulated a young slave girl into becoming the friendly face that lured her and others into the killer’s cabin basement. Bloody Mary, her young son and many others wound up trapped and starving with the only hope of survival being the slave traders freeing her from one imprisonment to another. Days went by and as the trapped started to die off slave traders arrived and picked Mary out of the group but chose to leave her son behind. Fueled by the rage of a mother about to lose her child, Bloody Mary called on the spirit of Mami Wata to invade her body and pommel justice down on the heads of the traders and Margaret Worth. With an earth-shaking stomp of her foot, the necks of the traders snapped – giving Mary a split second to grab Worth’s dagger and drive it into the woman’s eyes. Amidst the chaos Mary also stabs the young slave girl Margaret forced into helping her and that death cursed her soul and trapped her for eternity. She was tasked with reflecting the desires of humans…however awful they might be. This means there was always a killer lurking inside Elise, but she assures Bianca her soul is clean. 

After hearing the story of this woman’s past Bianca realizes she can free her but Elise’s blood isn’t innocent. She cuts her hand and bleeds into a jar mixed with Lena and Maggie’s blood and then hands it to Mary through the glass. With a sip of the drink, Bloody Mary is free but poor Bianca is forced to take her place! Now locked in the reflection Mary tells Bianca she doesn’t have to be an evil force but can influence the good in people if she chooses. When we next see Bianca she’s appearing in the mirror of another young girl and there is no doubt she’s chosen to pick up where her predecessor left off. Why be good when evil can be so delicious?