Halloween was never like this
The witching hour of All Hallows’ Eve is upon us once again, but Halloween was never quite like this. At least, not where a prime-time entertainment TV program is concerned. The outre, frequently over-the-top American Horror Story: Asylum is commemorating the evening in its own inimitable, over-the-top way, with a frenetic hour of frights guaranteed to be a conversationstarter — provided, of course, you like your horror with a dose of irony.
The episode, Nor’easter, is about a storm of the century — the timing is pure coincidence — that barrels down on Briarcliff Manor, a mental institution for the alternatively minded, just in time for an attempted inmate escape. The storm descends on the asylum with its spiralling staircase — Sister Jude calls this her stairway to heaven — with uncommon ferocity, throwing Briarcliff into the dark and pitting the emotionally disturbed patients against their even more disturbed minders.
From the time it started just two weeks ago, American Horror Story: Asylum, a followup to last year’s 17-time Emmy nominated miniseries about a haunted house in present-day Los Angeles, has demanded to be taken seriously, even as it makes viewers laugh. First, the serious. The cast is truly high-class, with a number of accomplished actors playing Asylum’s assortment of weirdos, from Joseph Fiennes as the monsignor-in-charge and James Cromwell as the brooding psychiatrist with an inordinate fondness for weird sex and electroshock therapy (“I hope you don’t mind if I don’t use anesthetic; it interferes with my readings”), to Jessica Lange as the scheming, sadistic sister-in-charge Sister Jude, Zachary Quinto as the too-good-to-betrue visiting doctor appalled by what he finds, Lily Rabe as the naive, newly hired Sister Mary Eunice, and Chloe Sevigny as a patient named, simply, Shelly the Nymphomaniac. Then there’s the serious subject matter, which tackles everything from the social prejudices of the times (a couple of women who happen to live together are regarded with distaste and thinly disguised contempt by the community-at-large, as represented by Sister Jude and her cohorts) to miscarriage of justice (a young man incarcerated for the bloody murder of several women, including his wife, is clearly innocent, but no one seems to care, just so long as he behaves himself and doesn’t try to escape).
The humour is what elevates the material above exploitation, though. American Horror Story: Asylum is frightening and uncommonly explicit in its violence — especially for television — but there’s plenty of wit to go along with the gothic house of horrors. (FX Canada — 8 & 11 p.m.)