Posts tagged: American Horror Story Season 5

American Horror Story: Hotel S05E12 “Be Our Guest” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on FOX, Tuesdays, 10pm
Writer: John J Gray
Director: Bradley Buecker

Essential Plot Points:

• The episode opens on Liz, talking about how things went right for a while once Iris and she took over the hotel. We watch as the Countess opens Liz’s throat and…

• Cut back to Liz and Iris greeting new guests. Who Sally and Will promptly murder. Again. The hotel has been renovated but the habits of its dead guests have not. Liz and Iris call a meeting telling the ghosts they need to stop killing.

• Will cuts up rough until Liz and Iris point out he’s running out of money now he’s dead. March arrives and agrees with Liz and Iris. Better still, he points out that if the hotel survives until August 23 2026 it becomes a historic monument and can never be demolished. So they have to behave. Will reluctantly falls in line but Sally defies him. When March threatens her with the Addiction Demon she storms off.

• Later, Iris goes to Sally’s room and points out how alike they are; both defined by loneliness and the loss of someone they loved who didn’t love them back. She apologises for killing Sally and gives her a present: an iPhone. Iris notes Sally still thinks it’s 1994 and that the world she feels she’s cut off from is now at her finger tips. Sally becomes an internet sensation, Tweeting, Instagramming and blogging the days and nights of her eternal life. For the first time ever, she doesn’t feel alone.

• Downstairs, a brooding Will is confronted by Liz. Will thanks her for sending Lachlan to school elsewhere and Liz explains more about the current state of Will’s company; that the clothing line is failing but the other products are holding it up. She encourages him to reinvent himself, with death being no barrier now. Will responds that the company needs a face and liz smiles and presents herself. Will, initially reluctant, agrees.

• Liz becomes the new legal face and voice of Will at company meetings. Fashion shows are held exclusively at the Cortez, where Will is presumed to be a reclusive resident. No cameras are allowed and the models are renowned as an “eclectic” bunch. In reality, they’re the ghosts of the Cortez with Ramona at their heart.

• The shows are a massive success but Liz feels unsettled. She remembers the show where she first saw Tristan. Iris, eager to help her friend, introduces her to Billie Dean Howard, renowned psychic and SEASON 1 CHARACTER! WOOOOO! Ahem.
• Billie Dean contacts Tristan for Liz but he doesn’t want to talk to her. Grief-stricken but holding it together, Liz thanks the other woman and leaves. As she does, Billie Dean asks who Donovan is. A tearful Iris is horrified to think her son is trapped at the hotel but Billie Dean assures her he isn’t. Through her, Donovan describes where he is as, “always being Saturday morning,” and smelling of the pancakes Iris used to make for him. The hotel manager tearfully accepts the knowledge her son is alright. And we burst into tears for the first time this episode.

• Liz, through narration, explains that her life actually got better despite the pain of losing Tristan. Her son, Doug, welcomed her into his life and she was there for the delivery of her first grandchild. She realises that Isobel has been born into a more accepting world and takes some deserved pride and joy in being part of that and of her family once again. That joy was tempered though, by the discovery she had inoperable prostate cancer.

• Liz breaks the news to Ramona first who offers to turn her. Liz turns her old friend down and points out that if she does this right, she’ll still get to see her family; they’ll just have to come to her.

• Liz throws a “suicide party”. She announces the truth to the ghosts. Will immediately hugs her and we burst into tears for the second time this episode.
• As the music swells, Liz asks the ghosts to kill her and they all prepare to do so. Then, the door opens and the Countess appears. Liz realises how much she missed the woman who helped her transform. She asks how the Countess knew and she responds, “You were always my fondest creation.”

• At this point we’re basically blowing snot bubbles and howling.
• All is forgiven. The Countess kills Liz. Liz looks down at her old, mortal body and lights a cigarette. Tristan says hello.

• No, THIS is the point where we’re howling.
• The model explains that he wasn’t abandoning her, he just didn’t want to get in the way of the life she still had to live. They embrace and are reunited at last.
• Flash forward! To Devil’s Night, 2022. Where Billie Dean is doing yet another special from the hotel. She’s turned it into a cottage industry and the hotel is full of people staying there because of Billie Dean. That’s not the clientele Iris wants and she complains to Ramona about what to do.

• Then John appears. Iris and Ramona greet the killer like the old friend he is and he offers to help. Billie Dean has tried for years to make contact with him with no success. This time though, John gives her an exclusive.
• We see flashbacks as he and the family go on the run. Unable to provide the blood one half of the family needs, John is struggling. Scarlett, still, somehow, the most mature person in the room, points out they have to go back. John agrees, they return to LA and he’s promptly shot to death by the LAPD mere feet from the hotel. He’s trapped and can only visit once a year.

• But what a night. John walks Billie Dean through the hotel and she talks about the dead packed into its walls. He shows her through to one room and she’s introduced to the Devils Night Dining Club, all dead, all eternal and all desperate to kill one last time. She’s terrified as John straps her into a chair and they prepare to kill her. He makes her an offer; never return to the Cortez and stop milking it for cash or they’ll find her and kill her. Billie Dean retorts that they can’t leave the hotel so she’s safe.
  Ramona appears and points out she can leave the hotel just fine.
• Terrified, Billie Dean leaves never to return.

• John goes to Room 64 where he finds his family, including a grown-up Scarlett. He thanks his daughter for coming and lies down to sleep, trying to savour the last few seconds of the one night he can spend with them for another year.
• Downstairs a beautiful young man strides into the bar. The Countess sits next to him, smiles and complements his jawline. The more things change…

Review:

Just this once, everyone dies. And it’s okay. This is the absolute last thing you’d expect from a horror show because it’s a happy ending for very nearly everyone. We’ll get to the shot of tobacco in the chocolate cake, and why that’s the best bit, in a moment.

First off, this is the Liz and Iris show and that’s why it’s wonderful. These two downtrodden, long-suffering women have been the emotional core of the show for a while and this week they’re finally in control. Not only does that mean we get a long overdue refit, it also means no one gets left behind. Especially not the ghosts.

There’s a subtle piece of reframing this episode as the ghosts realise that eternity really is a long time. March’s realisation that they have to “behave” to get the historic monument status that will make the hotel itself immortal is especially interesting. Even the dead have to evolve, and as the ghosts move with the times; the monsters they were are replaced with the broken, tragic people are.

Which is why it’s so powerful to see Liz and Iris fix them. The compassion is shot through with pragmatism but that makes it all the sweeter. They want, and need, to help and so they do. Iris, who could only see Donovan now understands the internet and what it can do for Sally. Liz, who hid for so long, becomes the public face of a brand that’s the definition of style. They become the people they always wanted to be, by helping their friends do the same thing. It’s wonderful to watch but the happy endings that are earnt always are.

Iris realising Donovan is okay will break your heart in the best way. Liz’s regal transition to the next stage of her life will break it again. This is an amazingly moving, sweet piece of TV that also happens to have a lot of violent death in it.

That brings us to the single, welcome dark note. John Lowe gets his comeuppance in the way he always needed to. The world’s worst father is murdered just outside the hotel and so doomed to see his family for only one day a year. The final shot we have of him, unable to sleep as the last moments of Devil’s Night tick down is a perfect sign off for an imperfect man. Forever alone in his own head, forever unable to fully re-join the family he broke by trying to hold together. Good.

Plus, Scarlett actually lived and turned out okay! Hurrah!

This episode is American Horror Story at its best. Humane and inhuman, funny and horrific, tender and bruised. An amazing sign-off to an extraordinary season of TV. Maybe next season we’ll get a return to the Cortez. I hope so. I’m going to miss these characters.

The Good:

• “And that hipster couple just trips around moping around the kale.” Best not on-screen cameo ever!
• “WE ARE A SHIP AT SEA! AND WHEN IT COMES TO YOU SPIRITS, I AM CAPTAIN!” March doesn’t get much this week but as ever, he’s brilliant.
• “The only thing that takes the edge off is when I can pull people under with me.” Sally, perfectly defining what she’s truly addicted to.
• “And you do matter in the world, you know. As long as it lives and your son thrives, you MATTER.” Liz has fought for every inch of peace and happiness she has. The fact she refuses to let Will not do the same is one of the bravest things the show does. You also have to love that they turn Will being dead and unable to leave the building into his personal brand.
• “Promise me you’ll keep an open mind.” “Remember to whom you speak?” Iris and Liz are such a great double act, and they’ve got some great moments here.
• “Be strong. I know you know how.” The only compassionate thing Billie Dean says and it’s a doozie.
• “He says it smells like pancakes. Your pancakes.” Sob…
• “In Isobel’s face I saw the future; she was being born into a world just a little more accepting than the one I had been born into. Maybe just maybe I had a little something to do with that. A little kindness, acceptance that transformed me in a way that nothing else ever could. I never thought life could be this good. Or that it might end.” Once more, with feeling – this is a horror show full of some of the nastiest images on TV and it’s also one of the best, most rounded depictions of a transsexual woman in TV history. That alone is an amazing achievement. The fact it’s part of one of the strongest seasons this show has ever had makes it extraordinary.
• “It’s probably for the best. I would hate to lose my hair.” Liz, once again, is amazing.
• “How did you know to come?” “You were always my fondest creation.” “I wanted to be here to help you transition.” This is the only show in history that could make the gang murder of a lead character sweet and moving. Gaga and O’Hare are brilliant and the entire scene is sweet in a way that someone’s throat being cut should never be. Yet it’s the highlight of the episode.
• “Darlin’ you had more living to do. I couldn’t get in the way of that.” OH MY GOD! THEY PLAYING WITH YOUR EMOTIONS AGAIN.
• “Wait, he’s trying to tell me something… Mr Woo doesn’t pay for what?” Still an awful non-character but this is a hell of a joke. Paulson nails the delivery too.
• “What did you get Holden for dinner?” “It’s dog again.” John Lowe. Brilliant killer. Utterly useless at everything else.
• “Look at you Scarlett. Where’d my little girl go?” “You’re just saying that cos I’m the only member of the family who ages.” Scarlett Lowe. None of your family deserve you.

The Bad:

• We never did get an origin or explanation for the Addiction Demon, but you won’t care.

And The Random:

• Your final Music To Be Brutally Killed To Playlist is as follows:
  “Knights in White Satin” (Remastered) by Girogio Moroder
  “Got It” by Joel Alter
  “Fade Into You” by Mazzy Star
• Shot of the episode is John Lowe, looking eternity in the face.

Review by Alasdair Stuart

• Read our other reviews of American Horror Story: Hotel

American Horror Story: Hotel S05E12 “Be Our Guest” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on FOX, Tuesdays, 10pm
Writer: John J Gray
Director: Bradley Buecker

Essential Plot Points:

• The episode opens on Liz, talking about how things went right for a while once Iris and she took over the hotel. We watch as the Countess opens Liz’s throat and…

• Cut back to Liz and Iris greeting new guests. Who Sally and Will promptly murder. Again. The hotel has been renovated but the habits of its dead guests have not. Liz and Iris call a meeting telling the ghosts they need to stop killing.

• Will cuts up rough until Liz and Iris point out he’s running out of money now he’s dead. March arrives and agrees with Liz and Iris. Better still, he points out that if the hotel survives until August 23 2026 it becomes a historic monument and can never be demolished. So they have to behave. Will reluctantly falls in line but Sally defies him. When March threatens her with the Addiction Demon she storms off.

• Later, Iris goes to Sally’s room and points out how alike they are; both defined by loneliness and the loss of someone they loved who didn’t love them back. She apologises for killing Sally and gives her a present: an iPhone. Iris notes Sally still thinks it’s 1994 and that the world she feels she’s cut off from is now at her finger tips. Sally becomes an internet sensation, Tweeting, Instagramming and blogging the days and nights of her eternal life. For the first time ever, she doesn’t feel alone.

• Downstairs, a brooding Will is confronted by Liz. Will thanks her for sending Lachlan to school elsewhere and Liz explains more about the current state of Will’s company; that the clothing line is failing but the other products are holding it up. She encourages him to reinvent himself, with death being no barrier now. Will responds that the company needs a face and liz smiles and presents herself. Will, initially reluctant, agrees.

• Liz becomes the new legal face and voice of Will at company meetings. Fashion shows are held exclusively at the Cortez, where Will is presumed to be a reclusive resident. No cameras are allowed and the models are renowned as an “eclectic” bunch. In reality, they’re the ghosts of the Cortez with Ramona at their heart.

• The shows are a massive success but Liz feels unsettled. She remembers the show where she first saw Tristan. Iris, eager to help her friend, introduces her to Billie Dean Howard, renowned psychic and SEASON 1 CHARACTER! WOOOOO! Ahem.
• Billie Dean contacts Tristan for Liz but he doesn’t want to talk to her. Grief-stricken but holding it together, Liz thanks the other woman and leaves. As she does, Billie Dean asks who Donovan is. A tearful Iris is horrified to think her son is trapped at the hotel but Billie Dean assures her he isn’t. Through her, Donovan describes where he is as, “always being Saturday morning,” and smelling of the pancakes Iris used to make for him. The hotel manager tearfully accepts the knowledge her son is alright. And we burst into tears for the first time this episode.

• Liz, through narration, explains that her life actually got better despite the pain of losing Tristan. Her son, Doug, welcomed her into his life and she was there for the delivery of her first grandchild. She realises that Isobel has been born into a more accepting world and takes some deserved pride and joy in being part of that and of her family once again. That joy was tempered though, by the discovery she had inoperable prostate cancer.

• Liz breaks the news to Ramona first who offers to turn her. Liz turns her old friend down and points out that if she does this right, she’ll still get to see her family; they’ll just have to come to her.

• Liz throws a “suicide party”. She announces the truth to the ghosts. Will immediately hugs her and we burst into tears for the second time this episode.
• As the music swells, Liz asks the ghosts to kill her and they all prepare to do so. Then, the door opens and the Countess appears. Liz realises how much she missed the woman who helped her transform. She asks how the Countess knew and she responds, “You were always my fondest creation.”

• At this point we’re basically blowing snot bubbles and howling.
• All is forgiven. The Countess kills Liz. Liz looks down at her old, mortal body and lights a cigarette. Tristan says hello.

• No, THIS is the point where we’re howling.
• The model explains that he wasn’t abandoning her, he just didn’t want to get in the way of the life she still had to live. They embrace and are reunited at last.
• Flash forward! To Devil’s Night, 2022. Where Billie Dean is doing yet another special from the hotel. She’s turned it into a cottage industry and the hotel is full of people staying there because of Billie Dean. That’s not the clientele Iris wants and she complains to Ramona about what to do.

• Then John appears. Iris and Ramona greet the killer like the old friend he is and he offers to help. Billie Dean has tried for years to make contact with him with no success. This time though, John gives her an exclusive.
• We see flashbacks as he and the family go on the run. Unable to provide the blood one half of the family needs, John is struggling. Scarlett, still, somehow, the most mature person in the room, points out they have to go back. John agrees, they return to LA and he’s promptly shot to death by the LAPD mere feet from the hotel. He’s trapped and can only visit once a year.

• But what a night. John walks Billie Dean through the hotel and she talks about the dead packed into its walls. He shows her through to one room and she’s introduced to the Devils Night Dining Club, all dead, all eternal and all desperate to kill one last time. She’s terrified as John straps her into a chair and they prepare to kill her. He makes her an offer; never return to the Cortez and stop milking it for cash or they’ll find her and kill her. Billie Dean retorts that they can’t leave the hotel so she’s safe.
  Ramona appears and points out she can leave the hotel just fine.
• Terrified, Billie Dean leaves never to return.

• John goes to Room 64 where he finds his family, including a grown-up Scarlett. He thanks his daughter for coming and lies down to sleep, trying to savour the last few seconds of the one night he can spend with them for another year.
• Downstairs a beautiful young man strides into the bar. The Countess sits next to him, smiles and complements his jawline. The more things change…

Review:

Just this once, everyone dies. And it’s okay. This is the absolute last thing you’d expect from a horror show because it’s a happy ending for very nearly everyone. We’ll get to the shot of tobacco in the chocolate cake, and why that’s the best bit, in a moment.

First off, this is the Liz and Iris show and that’s why it’s wonderful. These two downtrodden, long-suffering women have been the emotional core of the show for a while and this week they’re finally in control. Not only does that mean we get a long overdue refit, it also means no one gets left behind. Especially not the ghosts.

There’s a subtle piece of reframing this episode as the ghosts realise that eternity really is a long time. March’s realisation that they have to “behave” to get the historic monument status that will make the hotel itself immortal is especially interesting. Even the dead have to evolve, and as the ghosts move with the times; the monsters they were are replaced with the broken, tragic people are.

Which is why it’s so powerful to see Liz and Iris fix them. The compassion is shot through with pragmatism but that makes it all the sweeter. They want, and need, to help and so they do. Iris, who could only see Donovan now understands the internet and what it can do for Sally. Liz, who hid for so long, becomes the public face of a brand that’s the definition of style. They become the people they always wanted to be, by helping their friends do the same thing. It’s wonderful to watch but the happy endings that are earnt always are.

Iris realising Donovan is okay will break your heart in the best way. Liz’s regal transition to the next stage of her life will break it again. This is an amazingly moving, sweet piece of TV that also happens to have a lot of violent death in it.

That brings us to the single, welcome dark note. John Lowe gets his comeuppance in the way he always needed to. The world’s worst father is murdered just outside the hotel and so doomed to see his family for only one day a year. The final shot we have of him, unable to sleep as the last moments of Devil’s Night tick down is a perfect sign off for an imperfect man. Forever alone in his own head, forever unable to fully re-join the family he broke by trying to hold together. Good.

Plus, Scarlett actually lived and turned out okay! Hurrah!

This episode is American Horror Story at its best. Humane and inhuman, funny and horrific, tender and bruised. An amazing sign-off to an extraordinary season of TV. Maybe next season we’ll get a return to the Cortez. I hope so. I’m going to miss these characters.

The Good:

• “And that hipster couple just trips around moping around the kale.” Best not on-screen cameo ever!
• “WE ARE A SHIP AT SEA! AND WHEN IT COMES TO YOU SPIRITS, I AM CAPTAIN!” March doesn’t get much this week but as ever, he’s brilliant.
• “The only thing that takes the edge off is when I can pull people under with me.” Sally, perfectly defining what she’s truly addicted to.
• “And you do matter in the world, you know. As long as it lives and your son thrives, you MATTER.” Liz has fought for every inch of peace and happiness she has. The fact she refuses to let Will not do the same is one of the bravest things the show does. You also have to love that they turn Will being dead and unable to leave the building into his personal brand.
• “Promise me you’ll keep an open mind.” “Remember to whom you speak?” Iris and Liz are such a great double act, and they’ve got some great moments here.
• “Be strong. I know you know how.” The only compassionate thing Billie Dean says and it’s a doozie.
• “He says it smells like pancakes. Your pancakes.” Sob…
• “In Isobel’s face I saw the future; she was being born into a world just a little more accepting than the one I had been born into. Maybe just maybe I had a little something to do with that. A little kindness, acceptance that transformed me in a way that nothing else ever could. I never thought life could be this good. Or that it might end.” Once more, with feeling – this is a horror show full of some of the nastiest images on TV and it’s also one of the best, most rounded depictions of a transsexual woman in TV history. That alone is an amazing achievement. The fact it’s part of one of the strongest seasons this show has ever had makes it extraordinary.
• “It’s probably for the best. I would hate to lose my hair.” Liz, once again, is amazing.
• “How did you know to come?” “You were always my fondest creation.” “I wanted to be here to help you transition.” This is the only show in history that could make the gang murder of a lead character sweet and moving. Gaga and O’Hare are brilliant and the entire scene is sweet in a way that someone’s throat being cut should never be. Yet it’s the highlight of the episode.
• “Darlin’ you had more living to do. I couldn’t get in the way of that.” OH MY GOD! THEY PLAYING WITH YOUR EMOTIONS AGAIN.
• “Wait, he’s trying to tell me something… Mr Woo doesn’t pay for what?” Still an awful non-character but this is a hell of a joke. Paulson nails the delivery too.
• “What did you get Holden for dinner?” “It’s dog again.” John Lowe. Brilliant killer. Utterly useless at everything else.
• “Look at you Scarlett. Where’d my little girl go?” “You’re just saying that cos I’m the only member of the family who ages.” Scarlett Lowe. None of your family deserve you.

The Bad:

• We never did get an origin or explanation for the Addiction Demon, but you won’t care.

And The Random:

• Your final Music To Be Brutally Killed To Playlist is as follows:
  “Knights in White Satin” (Remastered) by Girogio Moroder
  “Got It” by Joel Alter
  “Fade Into You” by Mazzy Star
• Shot of the episode is John Lowe, looking eternity in the face.

Review by Alasdair Stuart

• Read our other reviews of American Horror Story: Hotel

American Horror Story: Hotel S05E01 “Checking In” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on FOX, Wednesdays, 10pm

Writers: Ryan Muphy & Brad Falchuk
Director: Ryan Muphy

Essential Plot Points:

• At the Hotel Cortez in the not-exactly-thriving hub of LA, Vendela and Agnetha, a pair of European backpackers, check in. They’re disturbed by the hotel’s distance from the attractions they want to see and the creepy air to the hotel. They ask for their deposit back but Iris, the manager, refuses. Reluctantly, they agree to stay.
• In their room, the pair notice a hideous smell coming from their mattress. They realise it’s been sewn up and release the stitches, recoiling in horror as a pustulant, naked figure crawls out of it, screaming. Iris apologises, tells them they can’t leave before the police talk to them and takes them to Room 64. There, the backpackers are attacked by two blond-haired, apparently vampiric children.

• Elsewhere, Detective John Lowe is a cop on the edge. He’s chasing the Ten Commandments Killer, a murderer who exacts horrifically specific biblical vengeance on his victims. He’s also mourning the loss of his son, several years previously. An anonymous tip sends him to Room 64 at the Cortez where he falls asleep and is woken by his vanished son, one of the two children who attacked the backpackers. After the children run off Lowe loses track of them. Disturbed by what happened, he returns home.
• The Countess and Donovan wake up and dress for the evening. They visit an outdoor screening of Nosferatu, seduce a nearby couple and take them back to the hotel. There, they have sex then tear their lovers’ throats out, feasting on their blood.
• Lowe takes his daughter out for dinner and gets a text from his wife, pleading for help. He rushes to her location and confronts the Ten Commandments Killer. The man eludes him and his daughter screams as she stumbles across his latest murder scene.

• At the hotel, Iris chastises the backpackers, who are now locked inside bizarre, neon, Iron Maiden-like cages. She’s about to force feed them a meat smoothie when Sally appears and bullies her into leaving the women alone. Sally releases one of the two, who, terrified, immediately flees. She’s confronted by the Countess who slices her throat open. The Countess then leaves, warning Iris this can never happen again.
• In flashback, we see Lowe’s son disappear at Santa Monica pier five years previously. We then see him at home, argue that if he moves out, the killer won’t target his family. His wife tearfully accepts this and he heads out.
• In another flashback we see Iris arrive at the hotel 20 years previously, trying to stop Donovan from shooting up with Sally in one of the rooms. Iris murders Sally by pushing her out of a window then finds the Countess crouched over Donovan’s unconscious body.

• At the Cortez, Iris is immensely disturbed to find wealthy designer Will Drake swan in with a realtor. Drake is the new owner of the hotel and he surprises a sleeping Donovan who, like Iris, is horrified at the thought of being thrown out. The Countess, on the other hand, is remarkably calm, and welcomes both Will and his son, Lachlan. She takes Lachlan to see a secret room, hidden behind a wall panel. The room is full of candy, video games and blonde, unnaturally calm children. One of them is Detective Lowe’s son…
• As the episode closes, Lowe moves into the Cortez. “Hotel California” plays on the soundtrack and cuts out on the line “You can never leave”.

Review:

Hotels are weird. Like departure lounges they’re associative spaces, buildings you live in on your way somewhere else. Horror’s always had fun with hotels, and based on this episode, American Horror Story is going to enjoy this new playground. Murphy’s direction is glorious, crammed full of arcing, swooping shots and using the hallways to wonderfully unsettling effect. There’s an early tracking shot following one of the world’s unluckiest pair of backpackers down a hallway that’s just lovely. The various hotel denizens she encounters, some of whom may even be alive, all fit in just well enough to not tip her off. It’s a subtle, queasy scene that gives you the same sense of dislocation the characters have and it sets the rest of the episode up really well.

As does Iris, played by Kathy Bates. The hotel manager is a gloriously callous, grumpy figure who’s never played for laughs and glues the episode’s various plots together. She’s also got what looks to be a hell of an arc to come over the series. This episode alone sees her go from villain to victim to tragic figure all in the space of an hour.

That willingness to shift tone is what really works here. Wes Bentley’s gloriously straight-laced turn as Detective Lowe is the perfect antidote to the scream queen horror of the backpackers. Likewise, the elegantly wasted rock and roll decadence of Gaga and Bomer offsets Bentley nicely. And orbiting them all, wasted and angry and probably not quite dead or alive, Sally. Sarah Paulson doesn’t know how to turn in bad work and here she’s on top form. If a single plot has my attention this season, it’s her and how she, Iris and Donovan bounce off each other.

That interrelation is what really works here; this group of disparate people orbiting around each and the shabby, musty star that is the hotel. There’s a sense of something secret living in every room and the hotel and its denizens play something like a down-at-heel version of Nightbreed’s Midian. They’re also, mostly, surprisingly sympathetic. O’Hare’s Liz Taylor and Lowe in particular both play as remarkably likeable, crumpled characters. You like them, even with (and perhaps because of) Bentley’s gloriously CSI Miami shades removal in his first scene.

It doesn’t all work. The backpackers are a little too on-the-nose, but the real problem here is the rape scene. Gabriel, an addict, buys a room to shoot up for the night. A few seconds after doing so, he’s attacked and raped to death by a bizarre, demonic figure wearing what looks like a large drill-shaped strap-on. It’s an immensely disturbing scene and one that right now has almost no context. We see hints of the creature that attacks Gabriel at other points in the episode but right now this is the one part of the episode that plays like horror for horror’s sake. Hopefully later episodes will provide some context. They certainly need to.

Aside from that, though, this is an immensely strong opening to the season. The various plots are all moved along, the cast are uniformly very good and the episode is shot with a hallucinatory beauty that’s almost David Lynch-like in spots. The Cortez may look a little rundown, but this is the most interesting, and new, American Horror Story has felt in a while.

The Good:

• The direction was glorious. The swooping, arcing camera shots and fishbowl lenses do a great job of putting the alien feel of the Cortez across.

• Lada Gaga. She’s going to be one of the lightning rods for the show and you know what? Good. She’s a perfect choice for the role and she nails it.
• The structure. This is less one story and more three happening in the same place and connected in ways we don’t see yet. That’s going to annoy some people, and the show’s already been compared to the original season in that regard. For our money, this is the most accessible, and interesting, AHS has been for a while.

The Bad:

• The rape scene needs, very badly, to have an explanation by the end of the season. Because right now it looks like it’s in there for a cheap, and very very nasty, shock.

The Probably Controversial:

• This is the first Jessica Lange-free season the show’s had and that’s a good thing. She’s been a hugely successful part of a lot of its run but last season she was one of the things that ultimately detracted from the show. This season has already benefited, massively, from the focus shifting back to an ensemble and away from the Jesscia Lange And Her Amazing Friends model.

The Random:

• Shot of the episode is the elegantly wasted Donovan and the Countess, reclining post coitus and homicide in the remains of their victims. Horrific and mundane all at once.
• The sign in the neon cage room of death and smoothies, “Pain Don’t Hurt”, is a Roadhouse quote. No idea why, but you have to admire the aesthetic.
• Holy monkeys this is an insanely great cast. It helps that they’ve mostly worked together before too.
• Kathy Bates is, of course, best known for Misery. However, she’s also been strikingly classy in both Titanic and The Day The Earth Stood Still remake, as well as turning in a definitive performance in Fried Green Tomatoes At The Whistle Stop Café.

• Sarah Paulson is another longtime member of the American Horror Story players. She was also one of the stars of Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip and was Dr Caron, the scientist who explains just what the Reavers are in Serenity.
  No, really, she was.
  No, go look. I’ll wait.
  Told you.
• Wes Bentley exploded onto the scene with American Beauty. You may also have seen him in Soul Survivors with Eliza Dushku or as the magnificently bearded Seneca Crane in The Hunger Games. There’s also the outside chance you caught him as the lead in deeply odd sci-fi samurai movie Hirokin.
• Matt Bomer is a recent addition to the AHS family and has impeccable genre credentials. As well as appearing as mega-spy Bryce Larkin in Chuck and relentlessly suave conman Neil Caffrey in White Collar, he also voiced Superman in Superman: Unbound. You can, and should, also track down Bomer’s work in the excellent Magic Movie duology and Space Station 76.
• Chloe Sevigny hasn’t been in AHS since the second season but she hasn’t been idle. Sevigny’s work is often difficult but never bad and we recommend her recent turn in the Netflix series Bloodline in particular. Alternately, her turn in the criminally under-rated Zodiac is also great.
• Denis O’Hare is a proud member of the ‘That Guy Who Was In That Thing That Time!’ corps of elite character actors. His turn as Liz Taylor here is magnificent, but odds you remember him as the amiably terrifying vampire elder Russell Edington on True Blood.
• Cheyenne Jackson is not Todd Stashwick, who plays Deacon on 12 Monkeys although the resemblance is uncanny. He was excellent as Danny on 30 Rock and you may also have caught his memorable turn as Dustin Goolsby on Glee.
• Lady Gaga is of course a massively successful recording artist but this isn’t her first acting role. She’s had often brief, always fun spots in movies like Machete Kills, Muppets Most Wanted and Sin City: A Dame To Kill For.
• The hotel jukebox is very well stocked judging by this episode. We got “The Eternal” by Joy Division over the opening; “Never Land (A Fragment)” by The Sisters of Mercy over the rape scene; and “Tear You Apart” by She Wants Revenge over the seduction and double murder. Plus the definitive “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” over Will and Lachlan’s arrival, “Downtown” by Petula Clark during Iris’s flashback and “Body and Soul” by the Benny Goodman Trio playing on the radio. But let’s face it, “Hotel California” playing over the end tells you pretty much everything you need to know.

Review by Alasdair Stuart

• Classy New American Horror Story Hotel Pics Including Lady Gaga
• Lady Gaga Reveals Striking New American Horror Story Hotel Image
• American Horror Story: Hotel – New Cast Portraits

American Horror Story: Hotel S05E01 “Checking In” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on FOX, Wednesdays, 10pm

Writers: Ryan Muphy & Brad Falchuk
Director: Ryan Muphy

Essential Plot Points:

• At the Hotel Cortez in the not-exactly-thriving hub of LA, Vendela and Agnetha, a pair of European backpackers, check in. They’re disturbed by the hotel’s distance from the attractions they want to see and the creepy air to the hotel. They ask for their deposit back but Iris, the manager, refuses. Reluctantly, they agree to stay.
• In their room, the pair notice a hideous smell coming from their mattress. They realise it’s been sewn up and release the stitches, recoiling in horror as a pustulant, naked figure crawls out of it, screaming. Iris apologises, tells them they can’t leave before the police talk to them and takes them to Room 64. There, the backpackers are attacked by two blond-haired, apparently vampiric children.

• Elsewhere, Detective John Lowe is a cop on the edge. He’s chasing the Ten Commandments Killer, a murderer who exacts horrifically specific biblical vengeance on his victims. He’s also mourning the loss of his son, several years previously. An anonymous tip sends him to Room 64 at the Cortez where he falls asleep and is woken by his vanished son, one of the two children who attacked the backpackers. After the children run off Lowe loses track of them. Disturbed by what happened, he returns home.
• The Countess and Donovan wake up and dress for the evening. They visit an outdoor screening of Nosferatu, seduce a nearby couple and take them back to the hotel. There, they have sex then tear their lovers’ throats out, feasting on their blood.
• Lowe takes his daughter out for dinner and gets a text from his wife, pleading for help. He rushes to her location and confronts the Ten Commandments Killer. The man eludes him and his daughter screams as she stumbles across his latest murder scene.

• At the hotel, Iris chastises the backpackers, who are now locked inside bizarre, neon, Iron Maiden-like cages. She’s about to force feed them a meat smoothie when Sally appears and bullies her into leaving the women alone. Sally releases one of the two, who, terrified, immediately flees. She’s confronted by the Countess who slices her throat open. The Countess then leaves, warning Iris this can never happen again.
• In flashback, we see Lowe’s son disappear at Santa Monica pier five years previously. We then see him at home, argue that if he moves out, the killer won’t target his family. His wife tearfully accepts this and he heads out.
• In another flashback we see Iris arrive at the hotel 20 years previously, trying to stop Donovan from shooting up with Sally in one of the rooms. Iris murders Sally by pushing her out of a window then finds the Countess crouched over Donovan’s unconscious body.

• At the Cortez, Iris is immensely disturbed to find wealthy designer Will Drake swan in with a realtor. Drake is the new owner of the hotel and he surprises a sleeping Donovan who, like Iris, is horrified at the thought of being thrown out. The Countess, on the other hand, is remarkably calm, and welcomes both Will and his son, Lachlan. She takes Lachlan to see a secret room, hidden behind a wall panel. The room is full of candy, video games and blonde, unnaturally calm children. One of them is Detective Lowe’s son…
• As the episode closes, Lowe moves into the Cortez. “Hotel California” plays on the soundtrack and cuts out on the line “You can never leave”.

Review:

Hotels are weird. Like departure lounges they’re associative spaces, buildings you live in on your way somewhere else. Horror’s always had fun with hotels, and based on this episode, American Horror Story is going to enjoy this new playground. Murphy’s direction is glorious, crammed full of arcing, swooping shots and using the hallways to wonderfully unsettling effect. There’s an early tracking shot following one of the world’s unluckiest pair of backpackers down a hallway that’s just lovely. The various hotel denizens she encounters, some of whom may even be alive, all fit in just well enough to not tip her off. It’s a subtle, queasy scene that gives you the same sense of dislocation the characters have and it sets the rest of the episode up really well.

As does Iris, played by Kathy Bates. The hotel manager is a gloriously callous, grumpy figure who’s never played for laughs and glues the episode’s various plots together. She’s also got what looks to be a hell of an arc to come over the series. This episode alone sees her go from villain to victim to tragic figure all in the space of an hour.

That willingness to shift tone is what really works here. Wes Bentley’s gloriously straight-laced turn as Detective Lowe is the perfect antidote to the scream queen horror of the backpackers. Likewise, the elegantly wasted rock and roll decadence of Gaga and Bomer offsets Bentley nicely. And orbiting them all, wasted and angry and probably not quite dead or alive, Sally. Sarah Paulson doesn’t know how to turn in bad work and here she’s on top form. If a single plot has my attention this season, it’s her and how she, Iris and Donovan bounce off each other.

That interrelation is what really works here; this group of disparate people orbiting around each and the shabby, musty star that is the hotel. There’s a sense of something secret living in every room and the hotel and its denizens play something like a down-at-heel version of Nightbreed’s Midian. They’re also, mostly, surprisingly sympathetic. O’Hare’s Liz Taylor and Lowe in particular both play as remarkably likeable, crumpled characters. You like them, even with (and perhaps because of) Bentley’s gloriously CSI Miami shades removal in his first scene.

It doesn’t all work. The backpackers are a little too on-the-nose, but the real problem here is the rape scene. Gabriel, an addict, buys a room to shoot up for the night. A few seconds after doing so, he’s attacked and raped to death by a bizarre, demonic figure wearing what looks like a large drill-shaped strap-on. It’s an immensely disturbing scene and one that right now has almost no context. We see hints of the creature that attacks Gabriel at other points in the episode but right now this is the one part of the episode that plays like horror for horror’s sake. Hopefully later episodes will provide some context. They certainly need to.

Aside from that, though, this is an immensely strong opening to the season. The various plots are all moved along, the cast are uniformly very good and the episode is shot with a hallucinatory beauty that’s almost David Lynch-like in spots. The Cortez may look a little rundown, but this is the most interesting, and new, American Horror Story has felt in a while.

The Good:

• The direction was glorious. The swooping, arcing camera shots and fishbowl lenses do a great job of putting the alien feel of the Cortez across.

• Lada Gaga. She’s going to be one of the lightning rods for the show and you know what? Good. She’s a perfect choice for the role and she nails it.
• The structure. This is less one story and more three happening in the same place and connected in ways we don’t see yet. That’s going to annoy some people, and the show’s already been compared to the original season in that regard. For our money, this is the most accessible, and interesting, AHS has been for a while.

The Bad:

• The rape scene needs, very badly, to have an explanation by the end of the season. Because right now it looks like it’s in there for a cheap, and very very nasty, shock.

The Probably Controversial:

• This is the first Jessica Lange-free season the show’s had and that’s a good thing. She’s been a hugely successful part of a lot of its run but last season she was one of the things that ultimately detracted from the show. This season has already benefited, massively, from the focus shifting back to an ensemble and away from the Jesscia Lange And Her Amazing Friends model.

The Random:

• Shot of the episode is the elegantly wasted Donovan and the Countess, reclining post coitus and homicide in the remains of their victims. Horrific and mundane all at once.
• The sign in the neon cage room of death and smoothies, “Pain Don’t Hurt”, is a Roadhouse quote. No idea why, but you have to admire the aesthetic.
• Holy monkeys this is an insanely great cast. It helps that they’ve mostly worked together before too.
• Kathy Bates is, of course, best known for Misery. However, she’s also been strikingly classy in both Titanic and The Day The Earth Stood Still remake, as well as turning in a definitive performance in Fried Green Tomatoes At The Whistle Stop Café.

• Sarah Paulson is another longtime member of the American Horror Story players. She was also one of the stars of Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip and was Dr Caron, the scientist who explains just what the Reavers are in Serenity.
  No, really, she was.
  No, go look. I’ll wait.
  Told you.
• Wes Bentley exploded onto the scene with American Beauty. You may also have seen him in Soul Survivors with Eliza Dushku or as the magnificently bearded Seneca Crane in The Hunger Games. There’s also the outside chance you caught him as the lead in deeply odd sci-fi samurai movie Hirokin.
• Matt Bomer is a recent addition to the AHS family and has impeccable genre credentials. As well as appearing as mega-spy Bryce Larkin in Chuck and relentlessly suave conman Neil Caffrey in White Collar, he also voiced Superman in Superman: Unbound. You can, and should, also track down Bomer’s work in the excellent Magic Movie duology and Space Station 76.
• Chloe Sevigny hasn’t been in AHS since the second season but she hasn’t been idle. Sevigny’s work is often difficult but never bad and we recommend her recent turn in the Netflix series Bloodline in particular. Alternately, her turn in the criminally under-rated Zodiac is also great.
• Denis O’Hare is a proud member of the ‘That Guy Who Was In That Thing That Time!’ corps of elite character actors. His turn as Liz Taylor here is magnificent, but odds you remember him as the amiably terrifying vampire elder Russell Edington on True Blood.
• Cheyenne Jackson is not Todd Stashwick, who plays Deacon on 12 Monkeys although the resemblance is uncanny. He was excellent as Danny on 30 Rock and you may also have caught his memorable turn as Dustin Goolsby on Glee.
• Lady Gaga is of course a massively successful recording artist but this isn’t her first acting role. She’s had often brief, always fun spots in movies like Machete Kills, Muppets Most Wanted and Sin City: A Dame To Kill For.
• The hotel jukebox is very well stocked judging by this episode. We got “The Eternal” by Joy Division over the opening; “Never Land (A Fragment)” by The Sisters of Mercy over the rape scene; and “Tear You Apart” by She Wants Revenge over the seduction and double murder. Plus the definitive “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” over Will and Lachlan’s arrival, “Downtown” by Petula Clark during Iris’s flashback and “Body and Soul” by the Benny Goodman Trio playing on the radio. But let’s face it, “Hotel California” playing over the end tells you pretty much everything you need to know.

Review by Alasdair Stuart

• Classy New American Horror Story Hotel Pics Including Lady Gaga
• Lady Gaga Reveals Striking New American Horror Story Hotel Image
• American Horror Story: Hotel – New Cast Portraits