New faces and stellar cast set to turn up scare factor
DEATH BECOMES THEM: Cuba Gooding Jr, inset, as Matt Miller in the new terrifying season of Kathy Bates, above, plays the leader of a bloodthirsty community. MIND-BLOWING. That’s the most apt way I can describe the sixth season of the anthology series, American Horror Story.
This is by far one of the darkest and most hair-raising seasons. Also, the creators have slowed the pace for more effective storytelling.
And Cuba Gooding jr joins this season on the back of Fox’s The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story.
The story unfolds as a documentary. Lily Rabe and André Holland are cast as the interracial married couple, Shelby and Matt Miller, who relive their paranormal encounter in a docu-series titled My Roanoke Nightmare.
Their verbal recollection dovetails with a dramatic retelling with Sarah Paulson and Gooding jr playing them. Think along the lines of Paranormal Activity meets The Amityville Horror.
It all starts with the happily-in-love couple going out to celebrate Shelby’s pregnancy. Their elation is short- lived after Matt is brutally assaulted and hospitalised. And, in her anguished state, Shelby loses the baby.
Feeling unsafe in the city, the couple decide to move to North Carolina, where they happen upon an abandoned colonial farmhouse that they decide to purchase, following a bidding war with the resident inbred hillbillies.
Not long after they move in, strange things start happening to scare the couple: loud noises in the dead of night, banging on the door, creepy totems of dead creatures and so on.
As the couple invested all their savings in this house, Matt has to continue working. And being a salesman means Shelby is left alone in that massive home.
Fearing for her safety, Matt gets his alcoholic sister, Lee (Angela Bassett), a former cop, to stay with Shelby. He also places video cameras around the property to keep an eye on things when he isn’t home. More so, with the local cops not doing much to help protect the couple.
The director very cleverly uses Lee’s young daughter, Flora, to further explore the pervading evil and danger in the house when she starts talking to imaginary friends. Every episode ends on a cliffhanger. And the writers cleverly bury clues to the strange people and rituals that Shelby and Matt witness. A video left by the previous owner also warns them about the imminent danger they are in.
The violent deaths that took place in the house at the hands of two serial killers aren’t the only disturbing things: the murderous legacy dates back to the first lady of the Roanoke Colony.
American Horror Story sees favourites like Lady Gaga, Kathy Bates, Frances Conroy, Wes Bentley, Evan Peters, Cheyenne Jackson, Leslie Jordan and Adina Porter, return.
From a cinematographic point of view, the creators have established the perfect ambience with the farmhouse. While misleadingly charming at first glance, it becomes the perfect vehicle to generate the scares. It is creepy, isolated and dark.
Scenes like the hailstorm of human teeth, a man, wearing a pig’s head, being roasted alive to other menacing-looking characters that belong in a Halloween movie, heighten the scares.
American Horror Story 6 is visually and dramatically creepy. And it’s only just started!
American Horror Story 6, M-Net Edge (DStv channel 102), Fridays, 10.15pm.