American Horror Story – Chapter 7

By starrymag | November 1, 2016

By: Caitlin Walsh

 

American Horror Story: Roanoke is making one thing very, very clear – no one is safe. No one.

 

Smile For The Camera

 

Episode Seven opens with Rory (Evan Peters) missing still (Evan, it may have been short lived this season, but we cherished every moment). Also, Sidney (Cheyenne Jackson) and the production crew were murdered by Agnes (Kathy Bates) dressed as The Butcher and full in the throes of a breakdown of some sort. It’s bloody and it’s hardly five minutes into the episode.

 

The housemates go looking for Rory throughout the house and find MURDER on the wall (complete with the last R, for Rory – something only Matt (Andre Holland) seems to care about). There is a pool of blood, but no body. Somehow, Audrey (Sarah Paulson) ignores this bad sign and just sees it as a ploy by Sidney to scare them. She is convinced that Rory must have taken the job in Los Angeles that he had been contemplating before. (Oh, if only.)

 

Meanwhile, we cut to Agnes who is talking to herself, filming herself and distraught over not being included in the show. Okay, so maybe she is also a little upset over the whole murdering thing she just got to when she killed some crew members she liked. But as she fluctuates between Agnes and The Butcher, well, who can keep track of where her mind is going next.

 

Lee (Adina Porter) is filming everything for posterity and proof that she’s innocent. And it’s a role reversal – Monet (Angela Bassett), who played Lee in the show, is now an alcoholic herself – one that Lee tries to talk with in order to help in some sort of way.

 

Dominic (Cuba Gooding Jr.) finally finds a moment to talk to Shelby (Lily Rabe) one on one and she’s not happy. Why would she be when there is a constant reminder of a glaring mistake in her life? Dominic; however, is trying to remind her that Matt doesn’t care. Dominic cares. And Matt comes barging into the kitchen moments later telling him much the same. “You want her, you can have her.” (Ouch, but not totally undeserved?)

 

Dominic lets himself into the confessional booth, telling viewers nothing entirely surprising that his favorite person on every reality show is the bad guy. The bad guy pulls in all the ratings, the bad guy gets the lead and Sidney called him in for one reason and one reason only – to stir things up. And that’s exactly what he intends to do. (Well, granted that he lives long enough or even until dinner at this rate.)

 

Bad Moon Rising

 

Shelby tries to find a minute alone to cry and she gets just that – one solid minute before Agnes comes up behind her, cornering her, bloody and knife-wielding. She begins as The Butcher and then as Agnes, crying that she just wanted to be on the show but they wouldn’t let her because they didn’t care. She goes back to being The Butcher, slashing Shelby with her butcher knife in the neck. Shelby, screaming and crying, tries to at least get video proof of Agnes killing her – accepting her fate. That is until Dominic runs in, tackling Agnes and going surprisingly heroic. He rushes to Shelby’s side after knocking Agnes out only to turn and find Agnes gone, having run off without anyone noticing. (What the hell, you guys?! What will it take for anyone to be just a little on alert?!)

 

The rest of the house eventually notices with Audrey and Matt helping bandage Shelby up with Dominic trying to stabilize her to keep her from bleeding out. Dominic screams into the camera when they finally realize that no help is being sent. The phone lines were cut and even an hour later, no ambulance is coming. Suddenly, finally, everyone is taking this a hell of a lot more seriously.

 

They decide to split up, find the production trailer in the woods and get help somehow. Dominic and Matt stay at the house with Shelby. Matt is refusing to leave her side and Dominic is refusing to put himself in Agnes’ path. Lee (who packed a gun because she’s the only one thinking around here), Audrey and Monet all go to the production trailer through the underground tunnel thinking Agnes won’t spot them there. But when they run into some screaming ghost creature (who is decidedly not Rory) that can’t even be taken down by four gunshots, they hightail it out of there and into the woods, panicked and petrified.

 

Matt and Shelby share a moment at the house with him playing nurse and tending to her. He even admits he really did love her. She cries, knowing she ruined it, and she loved him, but he knows that their marriage was over long before her tryst with Dominic. It was over the minute they moved into the house two years ago as he hasn’t felt human since then. It ruined them.

 

Back in the woods, the girls finally find the production trailer – along with the slain bodies of the crew. No phones. No laptops. The car is dead. They’re in full on hysteria now, as they damn well should be. Agnes comes running at them, only to be shot by Lee and then they take off in a sprint. Unfortunately, they come across a trail of people marching, chanting with torches in hand. The blood moon is out in full force and they all should’ve known better than to test fate twice. Audrey looks up in the trees to find disemboweled and bloody dead Rory strung up in the tree and the nightmare just continues. She doesn’t have time to grieve before they’re taken by the hillbillies, tazed and knocked out.

 

Somehow, God only knows how, Agnes is alive and digging the bullet out of her shoulder herself. She is creaming and completely delusional and…determined? Nothing can bring her down apparently. She’s had one rough day, if you ask us.

 

Hell Hath No Fury Like A Woman Scorned

 

Back at the house, Matt wakes up in the middle of the night having stayed with Shelby. But he goes downstairs, seemingly in a trance and waking Dominic in the process who follows Matt down to the basement. Is he sleepwalking? When something appears and Matt says he’s been searching for them…Well, it starts to connect. It’s the witch from the woods (Lady Gaga) that he had sex with all those years ago that he claims he doesn’t remember. But, oh, he does.

 

Dominic runs upstairs, waking Shelby, and they go downstairs to investigate. She pulls the witch off of Matt, tossing her aside and telling Matt to get out of there before she comes back – until Matt says the woman was the reason he came back because he’s in love with her. In a fit of rage, Shelby goes full Negan (from “The Walking Dead”) on Matt, bashing his head in with a tire iron over and over and over again, screaming and crying until Dominic pulls her off.

 

Back with the girls, the hillbillies are going full crazy hicks and strap Lee down to a chair, filming her and taunting her as they prep her for torture. They tear her pant leg and prep her leg with oil and seasoning before cutting into her.

 

At the house, Shelby is almost full in shock, having a hard time grasping what she’d done. Dominic is trying to calm her down, but she’s completely losing it. She is breaking down and says she didn’t mean to do it. Dominic tries to convince her to turn herself in, even as she pleads for help, but he reminds her that there are cameras everywhere so she can’t get away with it. He tries to clean her up, soothe her, but when he hears a noise outside and runs to the window he sees Agnes with gasoline cans. Uh oh.

 

Audrey and Monet are being taunted as they are now crying and not knowing what the hell is going on. The hicks give them food, telling them to eat up. They ask for Lee and get nothing but laughs in return. They keep telling the girls to eat up. They need their strength. And at some point, they put together that the meat they’re eating and choking their way through is indeed Lee herself.

 

Back at the house, Shelby and Matt watch while Agnes screams up to them as The Butcher, torch in hand, and actual ghosts with torches in hand behind her. She turns to them, cackling, until she sees the real Butcher. Hell, she’s screwed, too. She’s in awe at first, crying, until The Butcher drives a knife through her head as Dominic and Shelby watching from the window.

 

Somehow, we think the bloodshed has only just begun. Who do you think is the lone survivor in the end?