"Red Dawn" – American Horror Story S10E05 Review

And now the nightmare truly begins.

I've been hard on "AHS: 1984", and with good reason. It's been a pretty standard 80s horror movie, with very little of the flair that Murphy and Falchuk have demonstrated in the past nine seasons. Whether the entire thing was just to lull us into a false sense of dullness before unleashing the American Horror Story-ishness on us starting next week for the 100th episode, or they didn't realize what they were doing and lost their mojo, or something else, who knows?

This week on "Red Dawn", things happen. They're not necessarily good things. But there are things. And they happen.

We start out with a flashback to 1980 when Rita (now named Dee Dee) follows her father David (Tim Russ? Yes, Tim Russ) to a furnished apartment where he has affairs. It turns out he ties the women to beds and kills them. When Rita/Dee Dee catches him at it, he says that it's a darkness in him and kills himself.

Cut to the modern day of 1984, and there's a lot of running. And screaming. And more running. And more screaming. Richard explains to Rita that Satan brought him back, and summons the ghost of her dead father to tell her to give into the darkness.

Margaret claims there are campers on the other side of the lake, and takes Chet with her. Halfway across, she hits him with a paddle, takes his ear, and shoves him over the side.

Xavier goes nutso because of his burnt face and because he's a nut. He runs around the woods, chases Montana, looks for Margaret, and ends up shooting Jingles full of arrows. Then Margaret kills Xavier.

Brooke comically fails to notice Montana trying to kill her, runs out meets up with Roy who is no longer headless, and they end up having sex. Then they find Ray's head in the refrigerator and realize he's a ghost. Brooke isn't too happy about that. Lifelike ghosts are probably the main thru line of American Horror Story, and I still don't know how they work. Does anyone who dies become a ghost? Even if it's just people who die violent deaths, there should be a whole lot of ghosts wandering around. How many people have died violently in the last 2000+ years?

Brooke runs away. And screams. And runs into Montana, who finally tells Brooke Sam was her brother and tries to kill her. They fight and come sunrise, they're still fighting. The bus of campers arrives just as Brooke kills Montana, and the campers scream in horror.

The police show up and cart away the bodies. A paramedic finds Roy, discovers that he has no vitals, and tries to take him out of the camp. He appears inside the camp and Ghost Jonah tells him that now the camp is his home.

Margaret stabs herself in the leg and pretends to be one of Brooke's victims.

Richard appeared to the dying Jingles, and asked him to embrace Satan as his lord and master. At the end, they steal a cop car and drive to LA, laughing all the way.

Ghost Montana shows up and kills the Chief Deputy (Richard Gunn) securing the crime scene. And then tells Ghost Don and Ghost Jonas that they can be gods there.

So at the end of the day, Brooke is alive but in custody. Margaret is alive and apparently in the clear. Rita is alive, after she asks Jingles to kill her and Jingles refuses, telling her that she'll have to live with what she's done.

Richard and Jingles are resurrected by Satan. Montana, Don, and Jonas are life-ghosts wandering around the camp. Xavier is dead, and going by the previews he'll become Ghost Xavier and hang out with the other three ghosts. There's no sign of Ghost Trevor, although he'd presumably become a ghost as well. Matthew Morrison is still in the credits, although that doesn't mean much on American Horror Story.

One wonders if everyone who dies becomes a ghost. Wouldn't the Chief Deputy haunt the camp? He died violently when Montana killed him. What about the guy we see in the previews for next week who Montana kills? Doesn't killing anyone who comes into the camp just overpopulate the camp? Can ghosts overpopulate? Was Hopple close enough to the camp to become a ghost? She didn't seem to be as far down the road from Redwood as Jonah. So will she show up?

The previews also show brief flashes of the previous season scenes. Since a lot of them were set in LA, I could see the creative team doing some kind of big "tie it all together" episode. Richard already appeared in Season 5: Hotel. The hotel is in LA, so Richard and Jingles could end up staying there.

One still wonders what the creative team does with the next five episodes. Brooke has to escape prison, Margaret is presumably either out there looking for her or doing some serial killing of her own or both, Rita is doing whatever she's doing. The rest of the cast is either gone, doing hellish stuff in LA, or hanging out at Camp Redwood killing whoever comes by. It doesn't seem like any of these really relate to each other. Margaret is obsessed with the camp, but she doesn't know about Ghost Montana and Xavier. Brooke probably doesn't care, having bigger things on her mind. Rita, who knows?

The creative team could figure out a way to get them back to the camp to deal with Montana and Xavier. But there doesn't seem to be an organic way to do that. Granted, American Horror Story has never been that interested in natural plot lines. Need Queenie to stay at the Hotel while she's visiting LA? She'll stay at the Hotel: no problem.

But as I noted, things do happen. The ghosts have arrived, Satan is sending his agents out into the world. It beats people running around in the darkness and screaming. If the creative team can make something out of this... we'll see.

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?