American Horror Story Season 6 - Chapter 1

My Roanoke Nightmare

Meh, the inaugural chapter for the sixth season seems to eye those documentary interview reenactment series involving crime/paranormal/cult victims/subjects taking us through a traumatic experience, detailing it to us, leaving it to us to either accept or reject. Falchuk and Murphy have formed their stock company, including additional talent who enjoy working for them, like Cuba Gooding, Jr. and Kathy Bates. AHS regs, Sarah Paulson and Lily Rabe, are Shelby in reenactment and interviewee respectively. Rabe and Andre Holland (Gooding is him in the reenactment) are interracial couple who suffer assault in LA, fleeing to Roanoke, VA, of all places, to start a new life in rural country, occupying a rundown house desired by "white trash hicks". While Holland is away on traveling salesman business, white wife Rabe is nearly drowned in their hottub outside. The police deputy, however, can't find footprints or evidence supporting her claim. Animal growling can be heard around the house, with their living room trashed one night. Holland calls on former policewoman sister (Angela Bassett in reenactment, Adina Porter in interview) to be with his worried wife while away. Porter and Rabe don't get along (putting it mildly), but both determine that some folks are intruding on the property, locking them in the basement. Cameras installed by Holland prove that locals with pitch forks are the culprits. Tired of being on the property Rabe flees in hubby's car, hitting someone in the middle of the road, following after her into the woods, seemingly encountering a cult around a bonfire. Homage to Blair Witch Project, Paulson and Bassett come upon the house besought with stick-and-twine figures, Paulson later seeing these harbingers of doom in the woods at the end. A video playing on a television in the basement has someone hunting what seemed like a pig or pig-headed figure (it is faint and frenetically shot to be elusive). Earlier Gooding had found a dead pig at their front door. This is all set up with groundwork laid to establish an isolated rural house in the middle of the woods, a backwoods cult obviously up to no good, filthy, grotesque uglies certain to be a threat it seems, city outsiders trying to stake their claim in new digs, good ole boy law enforcement doing little to help, and a pill-popping former cop trying to do her bro a favor by staying with his pretty yoga instructor wife. Amusingly, like those document shows of its type, the reenactment performers and their real counterparts look nothing alike. I wasn't won over by this first episode. The cliffhanger for chapter one wasn't catchy enough to leave me itching to watch it next week. Not quite convinced yet this format for AHS will work for me personally. The paranormal experience shows you see on syfy are not my cup of tea.

Highlight could be bizarre shower of teeth which Paulson realizes would be hard for anyone to believe much less her husband.