by Conan Simmons – August 31, 2021 – 8:23 pm
The delay of production from last year due to the covid pandemic left 2020 without ‘American Horror Story’ for a year. First debuting in 2011 to frightening acclaim the show has become one of the most anticipated yearly offerings for horror fans. Now the tenth season is creeping its way onto screens in what has been announced as a two part season. Two different stories will be told to make up for the lack of a show last year. The first story is called ‘Red Tide’ and will run the first six episodes followed by ‘Death Valley’, the title of the second story, that will fill the final four episodes.
Finn Wittrock takes the lead in ‘Red Tide’ as Harry Gardener, a screenwriter struggling against writers block. He is assigned to write a pilot for an upcoming tv series. To accomplish his task he takes his pregnant wife and daughter, played by Lily Rabe and newcomer Ryan Kiera Armstrong, to the New England seaside community of Provincetown. The long trail of roadkill the daughter is counting as they drive toward their new home is almost overbearingly ominous. When they reach their destination it is during the off season for tourists so the quaint small town streets are constantly deserted, save for some very odd, pale, Nosferatu looking creeps that promptly become a nuisance, one of which chases the wife and daughter back home in broad daylight.
Having come from New York the family decides to tough it out and not let the pale creeps scare them. Harry meanwhile encounters the town crackpot “Tuberculosis” Karen, played by Sarah Paulson in one of her most transformative roles since season five. “T.B.” Karen screams obscenities at him in the grocery store and Harry doesn’t get phased one bit, just like he doesn’t take a creep chasing his family through the streets as much of a threat either.
Eventually, with writer’s block preventing him from making progress on his script, Harry prepares to take his wife out to dinner at the town’s only restaurant. As fate would have it, his wife starts feeling sick and encourages him to go eat alone. At the restaurant’s bar Harry is quickly propositioned by Mickey a male prostitute, played by highly publicized addition to the cast Macaulay Culkin, before taking in the floor show of a duet between an older woman and younger man singing a rendition of “Islands in the Stream” (the most talked about scene in the premiere episode).
After the song the odd couple invite Harry over to their table for a drink. The couple turn out to be successful stage play writer Austin Sommers and top romance novelist Sarah Cunningham a.k.a. Belle Noir, played by Evan Peters and Frances Conroy. With the sexual tension between the two heavily suggesting something along the lines of ‘Harold and Maude’, the couple share with Harry how they both enjoy living in Provincetown during the winter months where they are able to get lots of writing done. “T.B.” Karen, on her quest to collect the scraps the restaurant is going to throw away, spots Harry with the two and again yells at him a warning from a seemingly crazed conspiracy theorist.
There is a lot more to the episode including the mysterious town sheriff, played by Adina Porter, who may or may not know what’s going on in the seaside community as she shrugs off both a half devoured body found on the beach and Harry’s killing of one of the pale creeps during a home invasion. The relationships between Mickey, Belle Noir and “T.B.” Karen are revealed in increasingly disturbing scenes and the pale creeps take a liking to hanging out in the street below the windows of Harry’s house.
This latest season of ‘American Horror Story’ does lean more into horror than previous seasons like the comical season eight, ‘Apocalypse’. There is still the trademark level of camp that fans can expect from the series, created by Ryan Murphey and Brad Falchuk. The cast, of course, is game and eagerly play their parts to the hilt. Macaulay Culkin fits right in with the beloved regulars of Sarah Paulson, Evan Peters (both receiving producer credits this season), Lily Rabe, Frances Conroy and Finn Wittrock.
Filming during the pandemic that caused countless shutdowns around the world and emphasized the need for social distancing is noticeable throughout the episode. The cast and crew make it work to their benefit, utilizing deserted streets for increased and overtly ominous atmosphere indicating the isolation the characters are feeling to an almost painful extent. Thankfully the show never pulls a Zoom-style of filming. The show is filmed as best as could be given the challenging circumstances. The lack of background extras only adds to the setting and allows for the few characters there are to occupy more space without being too obvious that social distancing was an obstacle.
All in all, it’s a good start to the season. Fans of the series will surely be pleased and newcomers to the anthology show are guaranteed some frights mixed with a bit of camp. It’s hard to guess how the season will connect with previous seasons, something fans enjoy but is not necessary to follow the plot. Taking place in New England the obvious connection would be to season two ‘Asylum’. While this season will be challenged to reach the heights of the first four seasons, a challenge every subsequent season has faced since the iconic Jessica Lange left the series, ‘Double Feature’ should keep things on the up-track where season nine ‘1984’ left things.