American Horror Story: S01 Ep01 – Pilot

What happened?

After a traumatic miscarriage, and subsequent infidelity, the Harmon family relocate across country to a new home to try and rebuild their life. The house they have moved into, however, has a history littered with death and strange goings on, and it doesn’t take long before these become manifest.

A housekeeper arrives that wife Vivien perceives as an old woman, only husband Ben perceives her as a sultry and seductive young woman. The next door neighbour, Constance, also claims to have killed her once already, whilst she seemingly wanders freely about the house to collect her daughter, Adelaide, and pilfer items. There’s ghostly apparitions of murdered twins, a figure in a gimp suit that has sex with Vivien (potentially getting her pregnant) and Ben is prone to sleepwalking and lighting fires.

Daughter Violet experiences bullies at the new school, but befriends one of her psychiatric father’s patience, Tate. The two combine to terrorise the bully but the resulting chaos and monstrous glimpses freaks Violet out enough to tell Tate to leave.

Thoughts

Whoa. I honestly can’t say I expected that! Before watching the programme the brief adverts and promos I’d seen suggested American Horror Story was going to take the well-used plot mechanic of a family moving to a new house that turns out to have spooky goings on. To that extent I got what I expected. But boy did I get a whole lot more.

The pre-credit sequence delivered enough messed up material to set its stall out, with the obnoxious twins meeting a sticky end after being attacked by something toothy and unpleasant in the basement. The introduction of young Adelaide issuing warnings of their death just added to the totally unsettling vibe. The proceeding hour just went on to throw a series of quickly-edited, fast-paced disturbing events, characters and moments with little recourse for pacing or exposition.

Where to start? The eerie housekeeper, who appears as a half-blind old-woman to Vivien and a teasing harlot to Ben? As if she wasn’t peculiar enough next door neighbour Constance then made the remark about how she had killed her once already!

Let’s just examine that for a second. First it loads the idea that the housekeeper is a ghost. Furthermore that Constance murdered her. And further to that, Constance can see her and accepts her as a ghost without a qualm! That’s a hell of a lot to digest in one quick remark.

Constance is an absolute delicious joy, though. Her introduction to Vivien was pierced with horrible sentiments and outrageous statements, yet all delivered with calming surface pleasantry. Her tale of wanting to be a Hollywood actress before “the mongoloid” showed up was truly breathtaking, and yet she’d later undercut her apparent cruel scorn of her child by threatening Vivien if she ever touched her daughter again. Like with pretty much everything shown here, all is not what it seems.

I did also like Vivian, too. Of all the family members she was the one that came across as the strongest, though she’s not without her weird qualities. There was the suggestion that she was medicated during her sexual encounter with the man in the gimp suit – though quite what he was all about, and what it may mean for her pregnancy, is literally too bonkers right now to even fathom.

Ben is certainly troubled. His sexual frustrations resulting in a cry-wank after seeing the housekeeper masturbating in horny form exhibited serious psychological issues. Not to mention that he has adopted potentially murderous pyromaniac tendencies in his waking sleep, like the creepy burns man said happened to him. And Ben’s the guy people come to with their problems! Which brings me to Tate, the teenager Ben was treating that has rejection issues.

I am struggling to recall if there was ever a scene where Tate wasn’t in the house. What I mean is, is Tate potentially a part of the supernatural fixtures and fittings of the house itself? He did catch a glimpse of what appeared to be his own form, with blood dripping from the head. And, of course, that scene in the basement where he appeared to be one with the beast that scared the life out of the bully heavily suggested he was a driving force to what occurred.

I was pleased to see that despite the deluge of ideas and rapid cutting into and away from horrific images, there was time made for actual character beats. The scene where Ben and Vivien had a row with one another, clearly an argument that had been bubbling and repressed, turning into much-needed sex was brilliantly performed. This show needs humanising more than most, just to anchor the preposterousness. Credit also to Violet, managing to come over as a likable, near-fearless yet also vulnerable teenager. The show has done great work in making three dysfunctional people into likable leads.

So I’ve been tremendously impressed by this first episode, and my only concern is that they’ve thrown everything and the kitchen sink into this pilot episode and blasted off with a momentum that cannot be sustained. It’s thrown a lot of crazy into the air in no time at all and converting all that into an engaging, long-running series looks like no mean feat. If the rest of American Horror Story can match up to the standard of this first episode then I’m set for a hell of a time watching it.

What was the best part?

Tricky thing here is that few of the scenes lasted for a particularly long time so restless was the pacing and editing. My favourite part was probably the very first scene with the ill-fated twins mooching around the house. Instantly creepy with young Adelaide, and hitting viewers with the grisly baby body parts in jars, it wasted no time in showing this show meant business and was pulling no punches. As opening scenes go, few ever grab the attention this sharply.


What do I think will happen next?

So much to speculate on! I certainly foresee Tate remaining a part of Violet’s life despite her objection to him. I expect Constance will make herself a constant visitor, too. In the long run Vivien’s pregnancy will surely turn out to be freaky, considering the gimp-father, and Ben is going to continue to be lured towards having sex with the housekeeper (with dire consequences) and potentially burning down the place and murdering his family (although this won’t actually happen otherwise it’s the end of the show!). Right now, the only thing I can predict with any great certainty is that all bets are off.