AHS: 1984 - Mr Jingles**

So what is unexpected and unpredictable--often not what we get from a slasher film or the genre, except from the twists at the end which didn't always leave a good taste--can be quite welcome when it comes to the slasher genre. In AHS: 1984, Murphy and Falchuk threw some wild curve balls at us. Grossman's Margaret Booth very casually and strategically (and rather surreally) sitting serial killer, Richard Ramirez, down on her cabin couch, talking to him about "God and trauma", even listening to him speak of a back story about a rotten father, having seizures, and getting hit in the head with a swing seat (not to mention, his uncle shooting his mom), while eventually convincing him (it would appear) to go out and stop Mr. Jingles was not at all what I was anticipating. But if that wasn't enough, you had Cody Fern's Xavier, the aerobics instructor, confronted by a male homosexual porn producer who threatened him on the phone, following him to the summer camp. Threatening to expose him, Xavier introduces him to all the muscled, six-pack ab dudes showering nearby (Margaret insists that the men shower at night and ladies in the morning to diffuse any opportunistic sin). Murphy even makes sure to film the guys in slow motion as the water beats down on their chests and abs. That Ryan...just can't help himself. Anyway, if that wasn't enough, you have the revelation from Brooke that her "white wedding" (Billy Idol used as you have never seen before) was crashed by a fiance who goes through a psychotic break when he believes his best man slept with her, shooting not only said best man but Brooke's father and himself! And with all of those, we still have another wallop...the hitchhiker, for whom Margaret knows, is actually from 1970, a ghost who repeatedly gets killed! He was a self-confessed coward who ran off as Jingles was killing all of Margaret's friends, before being hit by a van that plowed into him. A ghost, or restless spirit, on a loop certainly reminds me of Apocalype, where witches of Cordelia's coven were each suffering a sort of hell on repeat. Maybe this is this guy's personal hell. He tried to get away from Jingles and now he's trapped in the place he died!