American Horror Story: 1984 – Red Dawn

By: Kelly Kearney

The sun finally rose on Camp Redwood, shining a light on the evil that has turned this summer getaway into a slaughter-fest. In the latest episode the camp counselors desperately search for a way out of this deadly nightmare only to discover there might not be a way out.

1980…

We begin in 1980 with Donna (Angelica Ross), a/k/a DeeDee Chambers, spying on her cheating father (Tim Russ). After spotting him entering an unknown apartment, DeeDee picks the lock and what she finds inside changes her forever. A woman is chained to the bed, eviscerated and covered in blood. Next to her is a wall filled with snapshots from other victims. Before she can process the horror that she sees the woman comes to and starts to scream. At that point DeeDee’s father walks in and admits to his daughter that this killing is a hunger he can’t satiate. Apparently, this woman isn’t his first victim and he claims that his compulsion to kill is an evil he was born with. DeeDee, being a Doctor of Psychology, pleads with her father to let her help him. “You were never supposed to know this side of me,” he says and with that he drives a knife into his own neck and kills himself. This moment sparks DeeDee’s need to understand evil and what drives some people to kill. She couldn’t help her father, but maybe she could help others before more lives are lost.

Flash forward to the present and Donna is trying her best to reason with a resurrected Richard Ramirez (Zach Villa) who claims to know all about the darkness of her past. According to The Night Stalker it seems Satan showed him who Donna is and what lurks in her genetic line. “You think you were studying evil? You are evil,” Ramirez says. That’s when Donna’s father emerges from the woods and explains that she will, “Follow in my footsteps. There’s nothing else you can do.”

While Donna is having a ghostly family reunion Xavier (Cody Fern) and the rest of the counselors are looking for a way out of Camp Redwood now that their escape plan has gone up in flames. Standing next to the burning car Xavier starts to freak out and threatens to torch the entire camp hoping someone will see the smoke and come save them. Margaret (Leslie Grossman) can’t let him destroy her deadly plans, so she clocks him over the head and knocks him out. The remaining group starts brainstorming ideas when Margaret mentions she saw some people on the other side of the lake. She offers to take a boat out and go look for help and Chet (Gus Kenworthy) agrees to go with her. Brooke (Emma Roberts) and the others split up and try to find another way out and that’s when things take a surprisingly romantic turn. Ray (DeRon Horton), head attached and all, runs into Brooke outside the dining hall. And considering he was just decapitated; he looks fairly healthy and only slightly disoriented. Brooke asks where he’s been, but Ray isn’t sure and the two head inside the dining hall for some rest and some serious flirting. They pass the time by admitting things from their past, like Ray’s failure to finish medical school and Brooke’s and her disastrous past with men. The two really open up to each other and that leads them down the path to romance. In the post coital afterglow Brooke lets it sip that she was a virgin and Ray is her first. This throws a wrench in Montana’s (Billie Lourd) theory that Brooke slept with her brother and her infidelity lead to his death.

Speaking of choices that lead to death, Chet pays the ultimate price with his life when he joins Margaret on the boat in search for help. The Camp murderess starts rambling about God and death in between rowing the boat across the lake. She asks Chet if he’s made peace with God and repented for his sins because with two killers running around he may not get another the chance. Chet brushes her off and she admits she thinks the athlete might be struggling with his own truth, mainly that he’s hiding his sexuality behind an ultra-macho persona. The two go back and forth until Margaret admits she’s also got a secret…she lied about the people she saw across the lake! She just said that to get each counselor alone long enough to kill them!  That’s when she swings the boat’s oar at Chet, ties him to the anchor and throws him overboard! RIP Chet.

The Truth Comes Out…

While Chet is swimming with the fishes, courtesy of Margaret, and Ray and Brooke are turning the dining hall into their love nest, Montana takes it upon herself to look after an unconscious Xavier. Eventually, the male model comes to and that’s when Donna shows up and all hell breaks loose. Montana still isn’t over her brawl in the woods with the psychologist and before their fight can get to round two Donna admits she was the one that helped Mr. Jingles (John Carroll Lynch) escape. She comes clean about her experiment to observe a killer in their natural habitat and Xavier loses it. Screaming, he blames her for the burns on his face and how he will never grace the cover of a TV Guide. His male modeling days are over thanks to Benjamin tossing him in that oven. All that’s left for him is a career in radio and, for that, he wants Donna to pay.

Elsewhere, Brooke and Ray are in the afterglow of their hook up and, considering the carnage they’ve witnessed this night, their moods are relaxed and happy. All that changes when Brooke heads to the fridge for a drink and finds Ray’s head chilling on the top shelf. “What are you,” she screams as she takes off running from the cabin, leaving a very confused Ray staring at his own head. Brooke runs to another cabin where she finds Montana and tells her the dead are walking. Montana doesn’t exactly offer her the distressed girl comfort. Instead, she knocks Brooke out thinking this is the perfect opportunity to get her revenge. When Brooke wakes Montana reveals her true identity and her plot to get revenge for her brother’s death. She wanted to kill Brooke but didn’t have it in her, so she sent her boy toy Ramirez to do it instead. Now she’s ready to finish the job Richard failed to do, and starts to strangle Brooke, who puts up an epic fight and manages to get away.

Meanwhile, Donna and Benjamin run into each other and the psychologist learns about Margaret’s deadly secret and subsequent cover up. Benjamin never killed until Donna broke him out of the hospital and brought him to Camp Redwood. This was all Margaret’s doing and Donna played right into her hand. “Outside of the war, I never killed anyone until tonight,” Richter says and the guilt hits Donna hard. It’s her fault he turned into a killer and maybe her father was right, evil is her birthright. She begs Benjamin to end her life, but he refuses because living with what she has done is a far more fitting punishment. Besides, Mr. Jingles only has one kill left and he’s saving that for Margaret, the woman who created this entire slaughtering mess.

Speaking of mess, Brooke and Montana are trashing one of the cabins in a slobber knocker of a brawl. Brooke grabs a fire poker and keeps Montana back as she runs into the woods. Unfortunately, the woods are anything but safe now that Benjamin is just found Margaret and he’s trying to strange her to death. That’s when Xavier shows up doing his best Robin Hood impression and saves Margaret by shooting Jingles with a bow and arrow! After his victory dance Xavier goes to check on the gasping woman, who then turns on him and drives a knife into his stomach! Margaret drags the knife down his abdomen, gutting him like a fish. Moments later Benjamin gasps back to life as Richard stands above him asking, “Do you accept Satan as your master?”

Sunrise in Camp Purgatory…

After what seems like never ending darkness, the sun rises on Camp Redwood just as the buses of kids make their way the entrance. Little do they know what is waiting for them. As the bus rolls to a stop, all the kids look out the window to see Brooke end her fight with Montana by driving a knife into her chest! The scene is a bloody horror show and when the police finally arrive Brooke is arrested. Margaret, who is hiding from the police, stabs herself and then wanders out the woods bleeding and begging for help. She tells the police that the young counselor went on a crazy killing spree and she barely made it out alive. The cops start sorting through the bodies and putting them in bags. They also find Ray’s head. Only it seems Ray is alive and wanders towards a paramedic who loads him into an ambulance when they can’t find any vitals.  As the ambulance crosses the Redwood barrier, Ray appears again but this time back at the camp’s entrance. “I just wanted to go home,” he says as Noah (Lou Taylor Pucci), the missing hiker, appears next to him. Chillingly, the hiker says, “This is home.”

Huge twist: NOBODY CAN LEAVE CAMP REDWOOD! In an instant the bodies of the dead all reanimate as Montana approaches a cop, grabbing his gun and shooting him dead. What’s one more murder when nobody stays dead for long anyway? The truth is that this isn’t a kid’s summer getaway but actual purgatory! The waiting room between heaven and hell! Elated over this news Montana yells, “We can be Gods here!” Purgatory might mean an eternity at the camp, but Ramirez and Benjamin might’ve found a way out. When The Night Stalker asked Mr. Jingles to give his soul over to Satan a portal must have opened up because we next see the two killers joy riding in a cop car and headed to Los Angeles. Nobody gets out of here alive unless Satan takes the wheel and from the looks of things he’s driving straight for the City of Angels!