It’s October, so you know what that means: Ryan Murphy is trying to give you enough heebie-jeebies to make it to 2016 with American Horror Story: Hotel. The season premiere aired tonight, and with it came more than a few scenes that not only lived up to the creepiest moments in the anthology series’ history, but some that will likely enter my dreams right when I think something good is about to happen. Here are the five moments that I’ll be haunted with until Episode 2 comes around.
The Mattress Monster
The first trailer and the opening credits made it damned clear that this season was going to give us some ghoulish shit coming out of a mattress, and lo and be(d)hold, we got our first taste of it in the opening scene. What did it taste like? Hell and feathers. Why was this guy in the bed? Why does he stink so bad? Did he get sewn back into it willingly? These are questions I must ask myself as I lay my head down later, feeling for stitch marks.
That First Murder
It didn't take Wes Bentley's Detective John Lowe long to stumble upon this season's first murder, and goddammit, was it a doozy. Actually, it wasn't really the death of the adulterous woman - who was impaled through the torso and had her hands staked - that was the most bothersome part, but rather the cheating guy beneath her. First, he had his tongue and eyeballs ripped out, as is the way the Addiction Demon handles his duties, and then he was presumably given a bunch of boner pills and had his junk superglued inside of her. This was not covered in sex ed. At least not the free version.
Room 64
What's inside of Room 64? Perhaps the better question is, "What's inside of whom in Room 64?" Just minutes after Max Greenfield's junkie Gabriel pulls his gear out and chases the dragon, he get spun around on the bed and taken from behind by the conical dildo-strapped Addiction Demon, who rapes him until he confesses his love to Sarah Paulson's Hypodermic Sally. It's a painful scene in more ways than one, and somehow the scariest part to me was seeing the clock fly backwards in time. While it looks like Gabriel is dead, he later jolts awake under the bed, and after we discover Sally and her son Donovan have been dead for 20 years, it made a little more sense. Or less sense. Whatever. I'm spooked.
Freaky Foursome
We knew that Lady Gaga and Matt Bomer's characters were going to be bloodsuckers of the non-vampiric variety - and I loved the sunlight gag and the Nosferatu nod - and we knew that they were going to have a particularly bloody foursome. But it was still unnerving to see it come to life (no pun intended) as Countess and Donovan wooed a couple into their hotel room and sexed them up before jabbing into their throats and lapping the life elixir off of the couple's faces. I can't imagine that Mare Winningham's housekeeper Miss Evers likes her job of cleaning after them, but at least she doesn't have to watch such sordid affairs. Unless she wants to.
The Kids Room
These white-haired kids were all over the trailer and opening credits, much like the mattress creepo, and while I was okay with having them just be random freaks who haunted the Cortez willy nilly, it appears that they're all actually children who were taken from their parents and possibly haven't aged at all. That's just how this hotel works. And rather than just showing us that they like to run around the halls and disappear when appropriate, Countess shows us that they all hangout inside a room with candy dispensers and dated video games that can be played on the walls. I'm not sure if the aim of this white haven was to give me Willy Wonka-ish brain spasms, but something about the lack of enjoyment on the kids faces just sat sour with me. And now I can't get the Tetris theme out of my head.
We can't wait to see what takes over our psyches for the next American Horror Story: Hotel installment, which airs next Wednesday on FX.
