‘American Horror Story: Roanoke’ Chapter 9

It’s murder by numbers, as we continue with our reviews of ‘American Horror Story: Roanoke’…

American Horror Story throws up more kitchen sink accessories in order to keep this thing going for another (36!) minutes. The most shocking thing this season is the drop in quality.

Three hikers, seeking internet fame, and being fans of ‘My Roanoke Nightmare’ are in the North Carolina woods looking to film some behind the scenes of the ‘Roanoke’ sequel series. In the woods, they stumble upon a woman crying out and unsure of her surroundings. They follow her through the woods until they lose sight of her. Then they see an overturned car. Inside it is the body of Diana, Sidney’s personal assistant. Her body disappears after the police arrive on the scene.

Meanwhile, Lee and Audrey deal with the arrival of Dylan(Wes Bentley) and have convinced him to go back to the Polk House. The Polks have a car they can escape in… On top of that Lee has lied and said she needs the tape back to prove to the world what really happened at Roanoke House.

Once there, Audrey finds the tape and Monet, who has been recaptured and tortured, Lee finds (Pa?) Polk who swears revenge and Dylan finds a knife in his side. In the struggle, Lee gets stabbed and left behind by Audrey and Monet as the Butcher’s Villagers encompass the Polk House.

Crawling, lost in the woods, Lee is found by the Witch. She feeds Lee a boar’s heart, who subsequently becomes possessed. Figures.

The hikers, determined to find the truth, are back in the area. They come across Lee in the dark and one of them gets killed.

Back at the house, Monet and Audrey watch the tape and discovers that Lee did kill her husband. In a supernatural bit of punctuality, Possessed Lee arrives back at the house and kills Monet by throwing her off the balcony onto a stake below. Audrey gets slashed but escapes. That is until she gets caught trying to hide in the root cellar and Lee hacks  her shoulder which causes her to fall into the cellar’s dark depths.

The two remaining hikers have stumbled upon Sidney’s production trailer and see on the camera monitors that Lee is there. Running toward the house, in an attempt to save Audrey they get caught by the Butcher’s Mob and are impaled on stakes and set on fire. So, no. They probably aren’t in the next episode.

The next morning the cops come in a swarm around Roanoke House and see the damage. They find Lee in the grass, barely alive, back to her normal state. Audrey also has survived. Once out of the cellar she sees the non-possessed Lee and overcome with fear, anger and rage takes the cop’s gun and goes to shoot her. Unfortunately, she herself is shot down by the cops. Lee is our foretold lone survivor.

❉  The POV shots of the hiker’s disembowelments and being set on fire were quite disturbing.

❉  Every new character was just there to up the body count.

❉  Audrey’s death is complete bullshit, a cliché and quite frankly a cop-out.

❉  Lee is still going to blamed for some of the deaths, yes? Everybody and their brother were filming shit AND, and this is a big ‘and’ (hence the caps)…there were a few shots not in POV. So… Hmmmm.

❉  Lee’s possession was the only surprise in this for me. No tension. Just by the numbers.

I guess Matt Bomber will be popping up in the next episode. I’m sure it’ll be sub par.

This is an extended lesson in pointlessness. This season has been a major time waster. All this episode set out to do was show off a few more gruesome deaths and set up a survivor. That’s the story. I still don’t care what happens to Lee. The least likeable character in the entire season, just about. The Lana Winters reintroduction is certainly interesting, but again not really anything worth the wait. The end of ‘Asylum’ sees a much older Lana than the one presented here, so when we know the character’s past and future, it’s a bit hard to make a satisfying middle interlude. Considering this season’s track record, I’m doubting it will be.

On the other hand, even if that turns out to be AHS’s finest (40!) minutes, it still will not be enough to save this season.

Like most things this year, you’re damned if you and you’re damned if you don’t.


‘American Horror Story: Roanoke’ airs in the US on Wednesdays at 10pm on FX, and in the UK on Fridays at 10pm on Fox UK.

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