American Horror Story Premiere Recap: S6E1

Last night’s American Horror Story season 6 premiere answered some questions, posed even more, and sufficiently spooked us. Spoiler-heavy recap below.

Well folks, we have a theme! Kind of. Wednesday’s season premiere hit the ground running, throwing us right into the new narrative structure and, subsequently, keeping us as hungry for answers as we’ve been since the mysterious season was announced. We’re immediately hit with a disclaimer that the following story is inspired by true events: enter André Holland and Lily Rabe as husband and wife. They start telling us their story, docu-series style. Intercut with traditionally shot scenes- which star Cuba Gooding Jr. and Sarah Paulson as the same husband and wife- we realize within the first five minutes that we’re watching a faux-“A Haunting” type show wherein Sarah and Cuba are essentially serving the reenactment portion to Lily and André‘s reality.

The show-within-a-show (and seemingly the season’s official theme)? “My Roanoke Nightmare.”

American Horror Story: My Roanoke Nightmare, episode: “Chapter 1,” via FX.

Our starring couple encounters trouble almost immediately, as Matt (Holland/Gooding, Jr.) unluckily happens to be the victim of a gang initiation crime. Shelby (Rabe/Paulson), pregnant at the time, loses the baby, presumable due to stress. They flee the city to seek peace and refuge in North Carolina, where Matt has familial roots. And, because this is AHS, things start to go terribly wrong as soon as humanly possible.

There are racist-seeming, unstable, gruff men who fail to outbid Shelby and Matt for their new home, and subsequently, are vaguely threatening. There are bumps and creaks in the night. Then there are hail-storms, wherein the role of “hail” is played by “ACTUAL HUMAN TEETH.” There’s a dead, bloodied pig that shows up on their doorstep. Shelby starts to feel, hear, and even see people in the house when she should be alone. It’s a fairly typical haunted house affair, but it works. It’s suspenseful, it’s dark, and it escalates quickly.

American Horror Story: My Roanoke Nightmare, episode: “Chapter 1,” via FX.

Shelby’s really taking the brunt of this horror. Home alone while Matt is away on business, she tries to relax in their outdoor hot tub, which seems weird because she’s been getting constantly spooked by the INSIDE of the house so going OUTSIDE at NIGHT is maybe a bad business decision, but what do I know? Turns out, I know this: she gets attacked by figures of people with torches and pitchforks, who push her under the water and nearly drown her. But when she phones her husband and the police? No evidence of anyone entering or leaving the premises can be found. Talk about a rough night.

And things only get rougher.

American Horror Story: My Roanoke Nightmare, episode: “Chapter 1,” via FX.

Matt’s sister, Lee (in “reality” played by Adina Porter and in “reenactment,” Angela Bassett), an ex-cop, current recovering alcohol and pain pill addict, and all-around badass arrives to keep Shelby company- and to lowkey protect her. And though Shelby now has another witness, strange things don’t stop happening. Knives move around the kitchen seemingly of their own accord, a wine bottle rolls into Lee’s room while she sleeps, taunting her. And upon investigating troubling noises coming from downstairs, Shelby and Lee find themselves locked in the basement. Meanwhile, Matt, who has installed surveillance cameras whose tapes report back to his cell phone, is watching the scene from his hotel room. And finally, the line of people storming into his home carrying torches is enough to have him believing.

Though Matt rushes home immediately, his sudden support isn’t enough to combat the fear overtaking Shelby as they emerge from the basement to find strings of hundreds of super creepy cornhusk-y voodoo-ish dolls hanging from her living room ceiling. Shelby wants out of the house- for good. And, as she explains in a talking head, promptly chooses the latter in the fight-or-flight situation she’s faced with, and she up and leaves.

It’s the middle of the night, Shelby is now flustered and frightened, and she’s fleeing. But while she’s almost free, a woman in centuries-old clothing suddenly appears in front of her car and smashed through the windshield. Shelby, in another move that MAKES NO SENSE, leaves her car to investigate the scene. She calls for the woman, who runs off into the woods. Shelby follows. BAD move. She loses sight of the road, starts to panic, and by the time she starts to regain composure, who’s there to greet her but more of those creepy strings of dolls AND a hoard of angry-looking, bloody colonials who slowly start to close in on her. This Roanoke nightmare is really getting good.

American Horror Story: My Roanoke Nightmare, episode: “Chapter 1,” via FX.

And a nightmare it is (aside from the total dream casting and the sheer brilliance of the trickery Ryan Murphy somehow managed to pull to allow one fan favorite to literally play another for an entire season, of course). This tightly crafted premiere ep’s plot managed to be creep-heavy without being heavy-handed on the scares, nor relying solely on horror tropes. The original (at least in the AHS world) structure allowed for backstory to be revealed in a way that didn’t make us feel like we were just listening to backstory, and throws us into the narrative in a more personal way. We feel like we know these characters right away, and we fully feel their fear. As well we should.

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Tune in to see the nightmare continue Wednesday nights at 10PM E.T. on FX.