TV Review: American Horror Story: Roanoke (Season 6, Episode 7)

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

EPISODE: CHAPTER 7

THE SCOOP: Agnes continues to go on a kill-crazy rampage. Audrey, Lee and Monet run into some old friends after making a daring escape from the Roanoke house.

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

THE SKINNY: Well how 'bout it! The seventh entry of American Horror Story: Roanoke once again gave us no shortage of dubious devil-work, sinister sidebars and untoward titillation. The opening salvo launched with our oily TV exec Sidney reveling in the schadenfreude of Matt going ballistic on Dominic, what it's done to Shelby and what great ratings its bound to yield. Then on his playback monitor from inside a production trailer out in the North Carolina sticks, Sidney sees the death of Rory from last week. Before he can rewind, he follows a noise outside, finds a P.A. gruesomely hacked across the neck by Agnes (now the real life Butcher), a well of blood spurting high, before he himself is gored in the stomach and left for dead. Hell of a start! The rest of the guests begin searching for Rory, Matt insistent shit's about to go down. Audrey thinks Rory got a better Hollywood and is merely playing a prank, even though they find a giant pool of fresh blood coating the floor like lacquer. But where's goddamn the body? Surely Agnes drug it off somewhere, right?

Speaking of Agnes, Kathy Bates reminds us what a terrific and terrifying actress she still is, Oscar caliber, as she gives a torch-lit confessional (with a cam she stole from Sid) about how she won the role of the Butcher, how method she was in playing the role that lead to audiences clamoring for more of her character. What Bates is able to do between the lines, with a mere glower directly to camera, is chill-inducing. She's clearly taken the reins passed off by Jessica Lange as the predominant force on AHS. Completely unhinged, she enters the house, slashes Shelby across the shoulder with her gory meat cleaver before being attacked by Dominic and ultimately disappearing. And on the topic of confessionals, Dominic does his in-booth direct address, admitting that he was not only hired to play the dick on the show – citing Puck and Amarosa as preamble – we learn he's been equipped with a body-camera to catch every intimate detail in the house. The guests tend to Shelby's black-bloody wound unable to reach outside help on the count of power-lines being cut. Matt tries to console his estranged wife, voicing full well they never should have returned to Roanoke.

In an attempt for help, Audrey, Lee and Monet amble down the dark secret passage way we've seen in the past. Along the way, a creepy madman appears in a tunnel, Lee pulls a .38 revolver and lets three shells fly. Darkness descends, the blood moon rises, and when the trio of gals show up to Sidney's production trailer in, they find his corpse utterly disemboweled, buzzards picking apart his gory intestines artfully scattered across the lawn. The PA's dead body beside him. Apoplectic, Lee thinks fast when Agnes appears out of nowhere, cleaver in tow, and plugs the bitch point blank with another hot round. Agnes recites some fire and brimstone type sermon and pulls the bullet out herself. Audrey films a goodbye to Rory on her phone, and in a nicely creepy touch, doesn't quite notice when drops of blood paint her face from above. She and Monet look up and see Rory's gore-sodden body splayed out and strung up in a tree. Lost, they're soon abducted by those meth-snorting, dope-growing Polk rednecks. They cattle prod Audrey and Monet, cut off Lee's leg, cook (not before tenderizing it with oil and seasoning) it and serve it to their two friends on some Texas Chainsaw shite. Talk about southern hospitality!

For me though, the single most horrific portion of Chapter 7, the one with the highest consequential stakes given all we've seen until now, was when Shelby uncontrollably killed her own husband. When Matt was summoned into the basement for a bit of coitus with his old gal pal the Deer-Woman (Gaga), Dominic follows, alerts Shelby, and as soon as Matt confesses he came back to Roanoke to be with the she-beast again, Shelby takes a crow-bar and brutally bashes his brains into a wet mound of gruesome viscera. Shocking. Unspeakable. Not predictable. Dominic calmly explains to Shelby she needs to turn herself in, which she can't quite reckon with knowing how much she loved Matt. No irony is lost in having Cuba Gooding Jr., who starred as O.J. on the Fox hit show, here advising a friend to confess to committing murder. Delicious indeed. Almost as good was how the show ended, with the real Butcher suddenly appearing with her cavalry and taking no mercy on Agnes by splitting her face in half with a cleaver!

Not sure about you, but I have very few qualms about Chapter 7. Not only was it the most action packed episode we've seen in a while, it was no doubt the goriest and consequentially deadliest of all chapters yet. Sidney, Agnes, Matt…all kaput. Here's hoping the final three chapters keep their foot to the floor en route to the ultimate gore-emporium!  

KILL OF THE WEEK: Man, a lot to choose from this week. We really lost a few key players. Sidney getting dismembered was quite delicious, Agnes getting brained by the real butcher was a doozy, but in the end, the way Matt – a primary player – was brained and beaten to death by his own wife. Yeah, that was the kill of the week in my mind!

BLOOD & GORE:

• Throat nastily hacked with a fountain of blood sky high
• A cleaver jousted into the gut of Sidney, blood spills
• Sidney's disemboweled intestines splayed all over the lawn, magpies picking them apart
• Agnes gets shot in the chest, blood pops and splashes. She later pulls a bullet out of her side by herself
• Rory's gory body, covered in wet fresh blood
• Matt get his brains bashed in with a crow-bar, pounded into a bloody pulp
• Agnes gets her face split in two by the real butcher, blood trickles

WTF CHARACTER MOMENT: No doubt about it, the oddest character motivation has to be Shelby going postal on her hubby. Sure she felt betrayed and heart broken, a passionate crime and all, but straight slamming a crow-bar into Matt's skull two dozen times until it amassed into a soggy pile of gory pulp? WTF?

MOST BIZARRE SCENE: I honestly found the scene where Matt rises out of bed, almost possessed, walks calmly into the basement, finds his old goat-woman girlfriend and starts boning down the weirdest of all this week. The grainy body cam of Dominic it was filmed on, the strange lighting, even without seeing Gaga's face, it read to me the eerily oddest scene. Bestiality, possession, adultery, murder. Bizarre!