AHS 1984: Episode One
TV Series: American Horror Story
Season: 1984 (2019)
Directors: Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk
Spoilers ahead!
The introduction to this season was killer, literally. It was as if I had changed the channel and found an old slasher movie on—like a random FX showing of Friday the 13th (1980) or Halloween (1978). Through the grainy effects used, I was tricked and transformed straight into the cliché horror-movie sex scene—you know, where everyone is obviously going to die.
They do. Ears were chopped off in a signature fashion and the entire camp was slaughtered.
Not only does AHS 1984 start the series off right, they designed sick credits with a new upbeat theme-song to pair. I’m telling you, it’s beautiful. By the time we are introduced to our main cast, twenty-some years had passed and the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles was gearing up to take place.
Here’s where our crew comes in (all participating in the same aerobics class mind you): Brooke (Emma Roberts), Montana (Billie Lourd), Xavier (Cody Fern), Chet (Gus Kenworthy) and Ray (DeRon Horton). Awesome, I’m here.
As much I want to dislike Emma from her previous roles in the series, she has grown on me through the years and I’m honestly glad she’s playing the innocent-school-girl type. Her role as a bitchy witch might have pissed me off a few times, but I guess that just means she was good at it. Billie, however, although still somewhat new to the series, plays a hip-rocker-chic badass and I LOVE it. I feel as though she’s really excelled through each season.
Cody is still an asshole and could still very well be the Anti-Christ from Apocalypse (2018). And no offense, being as this is first time seeing Gus and DeRon, I have no idea what to think about them. One is probably going to die first, just for that reason. Sorry, boys.
Anyways, now that you’ve read through my thoughts on the cast thus far, the last thing you should know before we head to Camp Redwood is that BROOKE IS ATTACKED BY THE NIGHT STALKER (Richard Ramirez). Yeah, they just added a TRUE CRIME SERIAL KILLER to this jamboree. (I mean, they did just talk about him after the aerobics class and Brooke did mention more attacks happening in the summer due to sleeping with open windows—a first of many moments of foreshadowing.)
And of course, as dumb luck would have it in this era for the sweet and innocent: Brooke smacks the stalker with a cast iron pan—how he isn’t knocked out, I don’t understand—and is safe, but not without the promise of death coming for her later.
To get out of the city and avoid the summer olympics, the crew gets jobs as counselors at Camp Redwood. On the drive we get two major signs that the whole thing is a mistake and they’re going to die:
Someone creepily tells Xavier: “You can’t just take your dick and walk away. There’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. I know exactly where you’re going.”
The gas station attendant LITERALLY tells them: “Turn around. Go back to the city.” He also mutters, “They never should have opened up that place again,” and says as bluntly as possible, “You’re gonna die.”
Pertaining to Xavier, I have a feeling it’s his boyfriend or something because he’s the one who dialed up the mysterious character, although maybe someone has been stalking him too? As for the attendant, he told you all—three times.
The crew leaves anyways, duh.
Que getting lost and hitting a hitchhiker. Although the show depicts modern effects, no one can deny the I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) reference. The crew gets him into the van finishes their drive to camp where they meet camp-owner Magaret (Leslie Grossman) and camp doctor Rita (Angelica Ross). This is the first scene where we find out how much of a liar Xavier is, too, as he doesn’t want to admit to the accident.
While Margaret fills everyone in on facts and camp rules, Xavier also asks about what the second leading cause of death of child campers is—it makes me more suspicious of him.
Margaret proves to be a super Christian and all about being a do-gooder while Rita is more laid back. Night time arrives and so begins the scary campfire story: Mr. Jingles and the Camp Redwood Massacre. Enemy-ear-collecting veteran Mr. Jingles was a troubled soul who snapped on some poor campers, cutting off the ears of his victims. The sole survivor of the attack? You guessed it. MARAGRET. She goes on some boring God speech and describes how she survived by staying emotionless and motionless during the event.
Our hitchhiker wakes up and we find out he too is a survivor of Mr. Jingles, but how? The man is reportedly in a mental hospital as per the end of Maragret’s story that I half-listened to. However, Mr. Jingles also escapes and releases all the patients the very first night of our story, so if that just happened, the hitchhiker has to have a story and I’m very curious.
Now, I don’t have to spill out all the details of the first episode, but just know that there are classic “spying” scenes from the killer’s point-of-view, stupid decisions made and warnings galore, all things reminding us what made us love movies like Nightmare on Elm Street, Texas Chain Saw Massacre and others.
As a conclusion of the episode, I’m just as excited and deeply intrigued how not just one, but two killers (fiction and nonfiction) are going to terrorize Camp Redwood. Let’s just hope the action can be successfully carried out over the season like our common thrillers carry over a traditional hour-and-a-half long film.
article written by Destiny Johnson
Destiny writes about true crime and thrillers. She likes movies that make you question the world around you, that keep you wondering, curious and even fearful.
Throughout the decades, slasher film villains have had their fair share of bizarre motivations for committing violence. In Jamie Langlands’s The R.I.P Man, killer Alden Pick gathers the teeth of his victims to put in his own toothless mouth in deference to an obscure medieval Italian clan of misfits.