American Horror Story: Apocalypse - Return to Murder House

Return to Murder House, with its “fan service” sort of hug to AHS faithful, is exceptional. Or at least to me. It is quite gruesome. It is quite unsettling. It polarizes and can be quite shocking. And it has the incredible Murder House gang emerging with the likes of the magnificent Lange, tragic marrieds, McDermott and Britton, evasive Violet (Farmiga), psychopathic son of Lange played by Evan Peters (Tate Langdon, also revealed to be Michael’s pops, having raped and impregnated Britton), and even the maid, Moira (Conroy). While this episode has its share of ghoulish moments—Satanists remove the heart from an unfortunate hitchhiking young woman, picked up by sadistic Mead as a sacrifice for a black mass to be performed for Michael Langdon, not to mention, Michael’s grisly hobby involving skinned varmints left for Lange as “gifts” for her to bury in a rose garden—there are some genuinely touching and poignant offerings to at least sustain the many blows. Such as Moira’s relief from the Murder House, when Lange’s Constance Langdon insists that before she would tell Madison and Behold what she knows about her grandson, Michael, that the maid just had to go. Moira’s bones are actually buried in the yard nearby, and Behold, with spate in hands, as Madison watches (she’s not about to dirty her petite, dressed-to-the-nines body), digs. The dark humor of the episode is rampant, as is the diabolical nature of Michael’s misdeeds. Like when Behold finds a skull, but it isn’t Moira’s, with Madison breaking the bad news because she just knows by holding it in her hands. McDermott’s Dr. Ben Harmon retreating to a quiet room to masturbate near a window because Britton’s Vivien won’t talk to him. That Lange acknowledges she was born to be a mother and raise…monsters. Michael takes out both the babysitter and a priest (the latter brought in to action by Constance, because she was desperate), graduating from insects (pulling off wings) and rodents (populating the yard as roses started to remind her of just how disturbed Michael was).

That Michael could see the ghosts in Murder House, after following Constance to it, locating her deceased after downing booze and pills, Ben Harmon sees him as a reclamation project. Ben tries to find the good side to him, with chess and Rubik’s Cube, spending time with the young man (he aged ten years overnight, according to Constance) before Tate ruins all the work by telling Michael that he’s not his son, refusing to believe his “nutsack” gave birth to such a monster. Later Madison confronts a weeping Violet, considering the Murder House somehow responsible for Tate’s violence, reconciling the two as a result. Vivien reckons that something evil in the house may’ve been responsible for her pregnancy and birth to Michael, the Anti-Christ.

The episode has Madison and Behold serving as listening ears and because of their warlock/witch abilities can even observe if the ghosts of the Murder House want to be seen and heard. Constance with her revelations about Michael takes up a good bit of the middle part of the episode and Lange is, of course, spellbinding as a storyteller. Her story about trying to raise a monster, nearly strangled by Michael even, and his murders, failing to rein in his psychopathy is quite compelling. McDermott’s story of Michael isn’t as long, although the surgery (giving Suvari’s Elizabeth Short “a smile”) and his descent into darkness is chilling. And Britton’s emergence sort of puts the bow on Michael’s rise of evil back story, talking about Anton LaVey, Mead, and Samantha Crowe arriving at the Murder House to visit him, realizing that he is indeed the savior they have been clamoring to locate. The shadow of the demon with outstretching wings as Michael eats of the hitchhiker’s heart, pulled from her pierced body by LeVay while she’s still alive and in agony, is more than a bit of a wallop. Many viewers will find it hard to watch, because it is basically mutilation and torture.

A call back to Mr. Gallant and his anal sex from someone in the fetish rubber suit has the Rubber Man appearing in Murder House, involved in the murder of a lesbian couple who unfortunately choose this establishment as their domicile, not even fully moved in before he uses a scalpel on them in a surprise they couldn’t have anticipated. Michael opens the mask to reveal himself in the Rubber Man outfit. In the very first season of AHS, the Rubber Man was Tate, so “like father, like son”. Well, whatever it is that lives and breathes in Murder House is the true father, I guess.

For me, Return to Murder House is quite a horror genre gem if you like your television dark, twisted, and abrasive. Michael’s handiwork, all past retelling by the ghosts of Murder House who saw him at his worst, is detailed…it isn’t for the faint of heart or weak in stomach. The episode does give us little bits of light within the pit of absolute dark as the Harmons and Tate and Violet appear to mend and repair their damaged relationships while Moira got to reunite with her mother in the cemetery thanks to Madison and Behold’s taking her bones to where they belong…that Moira admits to “wrongdoing” in removing her mother from the respirator just keeping her breathing but not really alive, this reunion is not a horrible conclusion to either’s story, as the two can now walk together in the night, together finally. Madison and Behold now know what Cordelia is up against…and the apocalypse that happened at the beginning of the season makes a lot more sense. 5/5