Two weeks ago, "American Horror Story" wrapped up it's sixth season. Throughout the entirety of this season's marketing, the theme for the anthology season has been kept under wraps, all the way until the premiere. The theme, simply being Roanoke, was one many fans suspected, but the way AHS formatted this season was definitely not.
AHS: Roanoke was formatted as a "Paranormal Witness" type of show, following Shelby (Lily Rabe) and Matt (Andre Holland) as they tell the story of their paranormal experiences in a house they bought in North Carolina through an interview-style storytelling and reenactments on a false tv show called "My Roanoke Nightmare." The second half of the season was a reality-tv style set up where all of the cast from "My Roanoke Nightmare" stayed inside the haunted house during the three days of the deadly Blood Moon.
Warning: Some potential minor spoilers ahead.
It's no big news that this season was a thrill ride and a half, with twists, turns, and blood/guts galore. To make this tangled season a bit more manageable, I'm going to split up this review into the good things and the bad.
The Bad
The easiest way to tackle this season is by splitting it into the front half, "My Roanoke Nightmare," and the back half, "Return to Roanoke." To start off with the bad from "My Roanoke Nightmare," I found it lacking in tension. Though this new style to AHS was immediately engaging, it began to wear off by about the third episode. It felt like it was a repeating a lot of the same actions over and over again without anything new added to it. For example, Shelby kept getting lost in the woods without really learning that it wasn't the smartest idea. In addition, the interview format took a lot of the tension from the show because the audience knew who wouldn't die. Though the season had a lot of death, the main character's lives never truly felt in danger because we knew they would make it.
However, "My Roanoke Nightmare" ended right as I was starting to get bored with it, kicking the show back into gear with "Return to Roanoke." Further mixing up the formatting, "Return to Roanoke," brought everyone from "My Roanoke Nightmare," including the actual Shelby and Matt and the "actors" who played them in the reenactments into the house during the deadly Blood Moon.
Though this back half was a lot of the good in this season for me, it had its bad moments. For one, it depended on every character filming for the action to be seen by the audience. Though many films take this format, it is often critiqued for the unrealistic quality of filming through some of the terror.
The biggest issue I had with the back half was the last episode, and yes, spoilers for the ending if you haven't seen it. Though the beginning kept the TV show format in its attempt to tell Lee Harris' (Adina Porter) story after "Return to Roanoke," the ending broke that rule. In its last scenes, AHS broke the rules it established at the beginning of the season and filmed like a normal TV show without any meta-TV show in it. This breaking of the rules created confusion in the audience, and instead of focusing on the story, I was too busy focusing on why they broke the rules. In addition, narratively, the ending was unsatisfying. It didn't feel as great as it should for a season so daring and bold.
The Good
Though it had it's flaws, AHS: Roanoke overall had a lot of good in it. I'm only going to talk about a few of them. "My Roanoke Nightmare" shook things in up in the AHS universe, and in a good way. The formatting of it, as I've mentioned, was so different to what AHS normally does that it gave the five-year-old show a shock of adrenaline to keep it's viewers interested. Right as "My Roanoke Nightmare" started to loose it's boost, "Return to Roanoke" came into play as a shocking twist.
I mentioned above how I found "My Roanoke Nightmare" lacking in tension because the audience knew who wouldn't die, and "Return to Roanoke" solved that issue. In the very first episode of the back half, the show established that only one of the people in the house survived the Blood Moon, but it never said who. That kept the entire audience on its toes, coming back each week to see if their favorite would survive.
I feel like I can't comment much on the acting or cinematography of the season, mostly because the actors are mostly all the ones AHS fans know and love, so of course they were all amazing. The cinematography was all found-footage style, so there's nothing ground-breaking about it.
Overall, AHS: Roanoke was a thrilling ride that definitely keeps the audience on the edge of it's seat. It definitely took the "horror" in American Horror Story seriously. With throwbacks to older seasons(including an appearance by a fan favorite from season two), and a new style that captivates the audience from the beginning, AHS: Roanoke is definitely a season worth watching, despite it's flaws.
