American Horror Story – Chapter 2

By starrymag | September 24, 2016

By: Caitlin Walsh

Into The Woods

 

The episode opens where we left off – with Shelby (Sarah Paulson) still lost in the woods, stumbled upon the colonial looking group armed with torches and pitchforks. It turns out, it’s not just any regular torch and chants meeting, oh no. It’s human sacrifice night in the woods and Shelby can’t tear her eyes away. While they string up a man like a pig (even put a real hollowed out pig’s head over his head) she watches from the trees. She started to run away, but turned back for the show for unknown reasons. They roast him, burning him just like a pig roast, as Shelby watches horrified.

 

That is until a Colonial woman (Kathy Bates) catches her and they start chasing her. Shelby finally gets some pep in her step and finds her way back to the road, collapsing conveniently just before Lee (Adina Porter) hits her with the car.

 

According to Matt (Cuba Gooding, Jr.), Shelby tells the cops everything at the hospital and they even go out to check the woods for any signs of the night’s human sacrifice shindig. It seems there’s nothing there, and once again, everyone’s having a real hard time buying it.

 

Something has switched inside Shelby from her fleeing the house because they spooked her and she lands in a hospital. After watching a man get burned alive, she’s decided that actually she wants to stay and fight for the house. They’re not going to be run off by hillbillies and they can’t financially manage it, so risking torture and death is fine. I mean, it’s not like she saw teeth rain down, a human sacrifice and was almost drowned or anything like that, right? Oh, don’t worry. That’s not the weirdest decision by a long shot.

 

I love Adina Porter. I love Angela Bassett. But Jesus, I do not love Lee. She’s been there, seeing what’s happening. She knows that regardless of what’s doing these things, it’s not safe. And yet, she brings her daughter to visit, anyway. Seems wise, sure, yeah, go ahead.

 

Off the bat, it’s not great. Flora (Saniyya Sidney) wanders to a dark closet in one of the rooms and tells Lee she’s been talking to Priscilla, a little girl in funny clothes who said she’ll make Flora a bonnet if she helps make the bloodshed stop. Lee writes it off as her child dealing with the divorce in a strange way – oh, kids say the darnedest things!

 

Later that night, Matt and Shelby hear pig squealing noises and they run outside to investigate. Shelby, in a matter of an episode and a half, is suddenly a “take things into her own hands” badass, apparently, and finds a pig head burning on a massive structure like the wooden dolls hanging from their hallway. It’s burning, and they realize it’s downright demonic. (Ya think?)

 

The police, this time, see evidence and see that something is indeed going on – even if no one actually knows what. They assign a 24-hour around the clock detail to the house for protection, which is a small consolation at best, but still something, nonetheless. He’s not much help when Matt wakes up in the middle of the night, seeing two nurses in the living room who shoot an old woman in the head, splatter her blood, laugh and paint an M on the wall. When Matt runs out to get him and comes back in – nothing is there. So let’s just brush it off, apparently. Must be stress!

 

Jeepers Creepers

 

The next day, when Lee’s ex comes to pick up Flora they find her in a crawl space talking to Priscilla. She tells them what her new friend told her. “They’re going to kill us all and save me for last.” Awesome. Lee’s ex takes this pretty terribly and storms out with Flora, telling Lee she’s not to see her anymore as he’s going to the judge and getting custody taken away for good as she’s unfit. It’s somehow her fault. And Lee takes it badly, falling off the wagon almost promptly. After Matt and Shelby find Lee in the kitchen, sloppily drunk and a mess, they put her to bed only for her to wake up not much later. She sees the two nurses Matt had seen, staring over her, watching her.

 

Meanwhile, Matt and Shelby spot a colonially dressed woman outside by the woods and find it best to run after her. Run towards trouble, you’re right! Outside, they find a hatch they’d never seen before and open it, having been led to it by this ordeal. They discover a tape with a man telling them so much, telling them everything. Suddenly, it’s all a little less crazy and a little more all the same time. He confirms what they’ve seen – the nurses, what they used to do, how they used to kill in the house murdering patients with names starting with certain letters all to spell out: MURDER. All good news, clearly.

 

And for them, it’s confirmation: something is going on, they are not the crazy ones, but all of this is indeed crazy in and of itself. It’s not okay, it’s not safe. When Matt rips the wallpaper in the room he’d seen the nurses in, he finds “MURDE” written in red. That confirms it. These things happened.

 

Look Around, Look Around…

 

While no one keeps an eye on Lee, she goes out and commits some casual kidnapping of her daughter, bringing her back to the haunted house they’re currently living through hell in. More than that, she’s committing a felony as someone who is on thin ice as it is. But while Matt and Shelby convince her this isn’t a good idea, and let her ex come back for Flora, the little girl goes missing. Our last scene is Lee finding Flora’s hoodie at the top of a tree, hanging with no sign of the girl.

 

“American Horror Story” this season is still different and an adjustment – the characters a little less fantastical, but still telling a scary story while paying homage to other horror films of the past. We’re building, but I can’t help wondering where we’re going with this. Where is Evan Peters, where is Lady Gaga? What are the limits of the ghost colony of Roanoke? What the hell can anyone do about it?

 

We’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we?