TV Review: American Horror Story My Roanoke Nightmare (Season 6, Episode 2)

Last Updated on July 31, 2021

EPISODE: CHAPTER 2

THE SCOOP: Lee brings her daughter Flora into the Miller's accursed Roanoke abode. Matt and Shelby discover a new videotape that offers clues to what happened with the house before they moved in.

WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW. IF YOU'VE NOT SEEN THIS EPISODE, STOP READING HERE!

THE SKINNY: And off we go. Well, continue I should say, as we chronologically catch where the first episode of American Horror Story My Roanoke Nightmare left us dangling last week. Chapter 2 of the Miller's so-far inexplicably bizarre exploits in the backwoods of North Carolina takes us right back to Shelby's time in the forest, at night, as she happens on some sort of demonic ritual lead by a chanting Kathy Bates and her legion of underlings. Trying to remain hidden, Shelby witnesses the very Pig-man that was featured in the mysterious videotape played in her home prior, here being spit-roasted in some kind of sick sacrificial rite of passage. Upon escape, she's spotted, and soon Shelby is chased through the woods, where she finds the main, road, and is nearly hit by a passing Lee. Shelby is taken to the hospital, given a drug test, and more or less dismissed when a cop is dispatched to the woods but finds not a damn thing. Now sure it was those twisted red-neck sickos who are responsible, in essence pulling a giant hoax, the ever sinful pride kicks and in and Shelby agrees with Matt that, no matter the scare tactics, no one will drive them away from their home! 

A guttural pig squeal is heard outside their house at night. Intent on standing strong, Shelby heads into the woods with a flashlight, Matt behind, and the two proceed to get lost for a few minutes in the woods, separating. When they unite, it's at the altar of a fiery, deified totem with a large pig-head mounted to the top. The Millers now start to think something demonic is afoot. Later that night, Matt follows a noise in the house, only to find an old bed-ridden lady flanked by two ill-tempered nurses. Upon back-talk, a nurse draws a revolver and blows the old lady's brains splattering like a cherry slurpy across the wall. Matt chalks it up to a nightmare, but he wasn't asleep. Before that he receives a warbled phone call, only to realize the phone isn't even plugged in. The cops come on the count of the blaze, and even station a patrolman in the Miller's driveway for 24 hours. But when Matt alerts the cop to someone inside the house in the middle of the night, not a trace is found. The cops are growing impatient with the Millers, and less likely to respond with any sense of urgency in the future. What in the Sam motherf*cking Hain is going on?!   

Meanwhile, Flora, Lee's young daughter is quickly introduced, told in retrospect by Lee as being a mistake having brought her to the house. See, Flora soon contacts a ghastly entity called Priscilla, feigning friendship, claiming that if Flora helps her stop all the blood, she'll give her a bonnet like the one she wears. Lee hears a noise and stumbles on that very bonnet, a creepy, dusty old piece of 17th century garb. When Flora's dad Mason (Charles Malik Whitfield) comes to pick her up one day, they find the girl hiding in a cupboard, asking where Priscilla is. She says that if they don't help Priscilla, they're all going to die, Flora last. Mason takes her away ASAP, leaving Lee to fall off the wagon and go boozing. Matt puts her to bed, noticing a half-dozen knives mysteriously sticking out of the ceiling, those phantom nurses surrounding her as well. Suddenly, the f*cked up Pig-man appears and strip-slabs of his excised flesh gorily dangle off the walls. Lee's petrified. Now unstable, she makes matters worse by kidnapping her own daughter and bringing her back to the Roanoke abode. The chapter ends with Flora disappearing, her creepy yellow bonnet somehow stuck in a tree 100 feet in the air. Not humanly possible!

As for the nurses, my favorite part of Chapter 2 came with the intro of Dr. Elias Cunningham (Denis O'Hare), a motor-mouthed maniac and former doctor cut from the Una-bomber mold, who claims to have lived in the basement. He left a videotape for inhabitants of the house, explaining that the two nurses were former patients of his, and had a penchant for murdering sick invalids. Five elderly couples the nurses murdered, including in the Miller house, yet when they tried to escape after their last murder, an enigmatic force wouldn't let them leave. Instead, they now serve as ghoulish go-betweens haunting new tenants. It's great to see O'hare return, playing a diametrically opposite turn from last year in AHS: Hotel.

In fact, in comparing further to past seasons, what I instantly admire about My Roanoke Nightmare is not just that it changes times, settings and themes, it's actually altered the framing in which the story is being told. Not only does S6 buck the trademark camp and kitsch of past avenues like COVEN, FREAK SHOW, HOTEL even, refreshingly so, the show has reinvented its entire rhythm, flow, pacing and editing style. It's unlike any past AHS season, and fun to watch the creators cross-cut and tow the line between solemn cinema verite stylings and entertaining re-enactment. There's a very honed in, singular focus so far this season that gives the show a more grounded foundation, rather than being hit with a slapdash, hyper-paced barrage of ever moving parts. It'll be interesting to see how the season progresses, how it maintains its relative lack of levity, if it can sustain it, how narrow its focus maintains or how wide its scope will open up to. I do know that so far, the fine actors and newfangled framing device has undoubtedly stoked my piquing interests in where My Roanoke Nightmare is headed this fall. How about you?

KILL OF THE WEEK: The only real kill we saw onscreen was that old lady getting her dome exploded with a bullet. Not quite Private Pyle in Full Metal, but not too far off either!

BLOOD & GORE:

• A bloody pig-man gets set ablaze, spit-roast style
• An old lady's brains blasted through the back of her head onto a wall, chunky red brain matter aplenty
• Bloody butcher knives and meat cleavers adorning the house at random
• Excised pig-flesh – bloody bacon – strewn about the house as well

WTF CHARACTER MOMENT:

The obvious choice here has to be Lee confiscating Flora away from Mason. If for no other reason, she knew her daughter was talking to an imaginary friend inside the house. How sauced-off must you be to bring her back?

MOST BIZARRE SCENE: I'll give it to my man O'hare for that meth-addled rant about the homicidal nurses running rampant down south. A long monologue over a grainy VHS, dude bearded and scruffy, basically warning the Millers their home is a maligned charnel house no pure soul can escape. I also dug the fiery totem!