American Horror Story 1984 - Red Dawn

If you thought AHS 1984 couldn’t get any fucking weirder, Red Dawn proves that Murphy/Falchuk can indeed up the ante. Purgatory reigns at Camp Redwood. You are killed but unless you are Richard Ramirez or Mr. Jingles, giving your soul to Satan, there is no escaping Camp Redwood or its wilderness environs. At least Montana takes the news better than Ray or Jonas. As the night ends, Margaret has also killed Chet (his death is horrifying as she chains him to an anchor after slapping a paddle across his noggin before taking his ear while supposedly boating for help) and Xavier (he actually rescues her from a good strangling at the hands of Jingles with his beast-mode archery), stabbing her own leg so that the police believe she’s a victim of Brooke’s. Yes, Brooke’s luck doesn’t get any better after learning that she had sex with Ray, giving her virginity to a spirit unable to leave Camp Redwood. And Montana finally tries to get even with Brooke over the death of her brother as the two engage in a scuffle, the victor has the butcher knife…too bad Brooke is standing over the dead, stabbed body of Montana, as a bus full of children arrive for camp! So she’s taken off in a cop car, arrested for the murders, while Richard and Jingles head for LA, all smiles!

The opening of the episode is chilling and perhaps one of the most unsettling (and memorable) scenes in the season. Donna believes she spots her father cheating on her mother with a hooker. This flashback in 1980 has Donna finding the hooker tied to a bed, mutilated and bleeding like a stuck pig, encountering her shocked father with a knife in his hand. He has Polaroids on the wall in the room, telling his daughter that he’s always had the darkness, and this secret life of his he had hoped to conceal from her. This inspired her life/career journey to determine if there was ever good in him, hoping Jingles proves her wrong…then Jingles has to inform her, while pulling bullets from his body, that he isn’t the killer from the 70s, Margaret was. Xavier tries to kill Donna because it was her releasing Jingles that led to his being put in a stove and his featured boiled, when he later encounters the man responsible for his scarred visage.

There is a lot of running and bloodletting. Butcher knives are buried into chests. Those who die resuscitate. It takes a surreal turn that all these LA counselors are now Camp Redwood occupants seemingly for eternity and can be seen by those still alive. Montana shoots a cop with his gun when he was checking to see if she was okay. A paramedic checks Ray’s vitals and doesn’t have readings, placing him in the ambulance, only for him to realize he cannot leave the camp. Margaret does appear to get away with a lot of murder, telling Chet there is no afterlife before attacking him. When Xavier leans down to check on her, Margaret doesn’t hesitate in piercing him with her knife. Just like with Trevor, there is no pause to give herself the chance to change her mind…she’s got that taste for blood and its good chum that will probably not stop with the counselors at Camp Redwood. 

The question does remain, though…why do they resurrect at Camp Redwood? Credit to Brooke for continuing to survive despite the odds against her. Margaret might have taken advantage of her arrest to remain alive and well at Camp Redwood, but the spirits lurk and we saw the evidence that mortals can be harmed by ghosts. 4/5

*I was glad we finally made it to daylight. Many of the night scenes can be a bit murky. I think this is the episode I would watch for Halloween had I kept at the series during the month of October.