The tenth season of American Horror Story tells two different, separate stories. The first story is very good, the second is very disappointing. In American movie theaters, there was once a phenomenon called Double Feature. These were two movies you could watch for the price of one. Cinemas did this, for example, to attract extra customers or for promotional purposes. This can also be done on television, Ryan Murphy thought. The subtitle of the tenth season of American Horror Story is Double Feature. This time we don't get to see one story, but two. And the contrast between these two stories could not have been greater. Just like its quality.
The first six episodes make up the story Red Tide. In this, writer Harry Gardner (Finn Wittrock, Ratched) retreats to a wintry coastal village where he hopes to work on his latest project. However, he gets a writer's block. Two co-writers, who undergo the same ritual every year, offer him a pill that would stimulate his creativity and talent. However, this pill turns out to have dangerous consequences for Harry and his environment.
Red Tide is one of the best stories in this series
Red Tide is possibly one of the best stories American Horror Story has produced. It starts quietly and takes its time to tell the story that it wants to tell. It has excellent tension build-up. From the moment Harry takes the pill you know it will go wrong and how it will go wrong. Still, the story manages to surprise more than enough with beautiful plot twists. Despite the typical flamboyant Ryan Murphy elements in Red Tide, the story is very subdued and that certainly adorns the series.
There are some unforgettable roles in Red Tide. An almost unrecognizable Sarah Paulson (American Crime Story) has a wonderful role as the local drug addict. At first, she seems like a caricature, but she manages to turn her character into a tragic case. Macaulay Culkin (Wish Kid) also has a beautiful tragic role and Leslie Grossman (What I Like About You) is wonderfully vicious.
The first half may be incredible, the second half is very disappointing. The story told here is called Death Valley and consists of four episodes. In it, we see how US President Dwight D. Eisenhower (Neall McDonough, Arrow) has to deal with an alien invasion in the 1950s, and how the events of that time affect four teenagers in the present.
Death Valley does some interesting things. For example, the scenes from the fifties are quite nice and they are beautifully filmed in black and white. It also responds in a fun way to the well-known clichés that exist about Area 51 and aliens. However, that's where it ends for me.
Four episodes is really not enough to tell this. Everything feels very rushed and the ending is quite rushed. While the storyline in the present was clearly intended to be an important part of the story, it really failed to engage me. The four teenagers are boring and the mysterious alien element from the 1950s is quite an anticlimax. It almost feels like a parody of American Horror Story.
The experiment of telling two stories in one season has partly succeeded for me. Red Tide is fantastic and manages to bring back the old American Horror Story feeling from the first few seasons in all its glory. It is eerie, gloomy and compact, and without too much fuss they manage to tell a fascinating story. Death Valley, on the other hand, is a lot less good, doing almost everything wrong that Red Tide did right. And I think it's a shame that the season has to end with such a sour aftertaste.
