With a fresh start in a brand new setting, American Horror Story:Asylum has succeeded in keeping us on our toes. After a year with the Harmons in their charmingly haunted home, we've moved on to Briarcliff, a secret-filled asylum in the 60s tucked deep in a forest apparently filled with mysterious flesh eating monsters. But there's more to Briarcliff than meets the eye, and it isn't just the things that go bump in the night.
To recap these last two episodes would, I think, be a great disservice to you who is reading this. If you've watched the episodes, let's not waste any time and just get into the thick of it. If you haven't, go check them out, and if they're not your cup of tea, then you probably don't want to read this anyway. Either way, here come da spoilers.
I, for one, am already liking this season (or should I say mini-series) better than last year's, and for more than a few reasons. Though the constant "WTF!?" moments of the first season were extremely fun to experience with friends, they always felt a little ridiculous to the point of campiness. All the sex and on-the-nose scares and jump cuts just felt like a parody of the genre. A fun and sometimes very well-crafted parody, but still a parody. Even the name of the show suggested some sort of self-aware cliché quality one should just expect from the show. And during the opening minutes of this year's premiere, I had a feeling we were in for more of that, and maybe even more exclusively.
The present day storyline of two horny honeymooners exploring the abandoned Briarcliff reached the level of ridiculous in a matter of seconds. The dialogue, the characters, and the explanation of why these two people are walking around this cobwebbed asylum just felt awful. Not even fun. Just cringe-worthy. So what if Adam Levine gets his arm torn off? We don't even know or care who he is yet. Needless to say, I was worried.
But then imagine my surprise when instead of being bombarded with non-stop, balls-out scares, the show decided to take it's time and allow characters to build and reveal themselves to us. I think this was necessary for the show to help us forget who these actors were in the first season, and accept them as their vastly different characters in this one. We'll get more into characters in a minute, but first I think it's worth mentioning the shift in styles between this and the first season. While the first season had plenty of scenes which took place in the shadows, for a majority of the season, most of the action occurred in a brightly lit home or during the daytime. The juxtaposition of sinister acts in broad daylight added to the creepiness. This season, the bright windows and warm mahogany walls of the Harmon house are long gone, replaced by cold gray stone and rusted cell bars of Briarcliff. While the Harmons hoped their LA home would be a fresh start, no one has ever come to Briarcliff with any hope, except for perhaps, their hopes to escape its dingy corridors.
With a setting as grim and dreary as Briarcliff, it's necessary to have characters that match. And this is where the show has improved since last season. The residents of Briarcliff are pitiful, complicated, tragic figures, all motivated by their own specific reasons. In other words, well-rounded, three-dimensional characters. But what struck me most about this group is that they're all mortal. Last season, with all the ghosts inhabiting the Harmon house, even when a character died, they weren't really dead (well, accept for Addy. RIP.). The stakes actually dropped a bit when you realized that being dead meant nothing to the overall story. This season, there is a sense that when someone dies, they're going to stay dead. Maybe I'm wrong. Only time will tell what the writers decide to do with the deceased.
To read the rest (IMDB form too short) visit: http://custodianfilmcritic.com/american-horror-story-asylum-2-1-2-2/
To recap these last two episodes would, I think, be a great disservice to you who is reading this. If you've watched the episodes, let's not waste any time and just get into the thick of it. If you haven't, go check them out, and if they're not your cup of tea, then you probably don't want to read this anyway. Either way, here come da spoilers.
I, for one, am already liking this season (or should I say mini-series) better than last year's, and for more than a few reasons. Though the constant "WTF!?" moments of the first season were extremely fun to experience with friends, they always felt a little ridiculous to the point of campiness. All the sex and on-the-nose scares and jump cuts just felt like a parody of the genre. A fun and sometimes very well-crafted parody, but still a parody. Even the name of the show suggested some sort of self-aware cliché quality one should just expect from the show. And during the opening minutes of this year's premiere, I had a feeling we were in for more of that, and maybe even more exclusively.
The present day storyline of two horny honeymooners exploring the abandoned Briarcliff reached the level of ridiculous in a matter of seconds. The dialogue, the characters, and the explanation of why these two people are walking around this cobwebbed asylum just felt awful. Not even fun. Just cringe-worthy. So what if Adam Levine gets his arm torn off? We don't even know or care who he is yet. Needless to say, I was worried.
But then imagine my surprise when instead of being bombarded with non-stop, balls-out scares, the show decided to take it's time and allow characters to build and reveal themselves to us. I think this was necessary for the show to help us forget who these actors were in the first season, and accept them as their vastly different characters in this one. We'll get more into characters in a minute, but first I think it's worth mentioning the shift in styles between this and the first season. While the first season had plenty of scenes which took place in the shadows, for a majority of the season, most of the action occurred in a brightly lit home or during the daytime. The juxtaposition of sinister acts in broad daylight added to the creepiness. This season, the bright windows and warm mahogany walls of the Harmon house are long gone, replaced by cold gray stone and rusted cell bars of Briarcliff. While the Harmons hoped their LA home would be a fresh start, no one has ever come to Briarcliff with any hope, except for perhaps, their hopes to escape its dingy corridors.
With a setting as grim and dreary as Briarcliff, it's necessary to have characters that match. And this is where the show has improved since last season. The residents of Briarcliff are pitiful, complicated, tragic figures, all motivated by their own specific reasons. In other words, well-rounded, three-dimensional characters. But what struck me most about this group is that they're all mortal. Last season, with all the ghosts inhabiting the Harmon house, even when a character died, they weren't really dead (well, accept for Addy. RIP.). The stakes actually dropped a bit when you realized that being dead meant nothing to the overall story. This season, there is a sense that when someone dies, they're going to stay dead. Maybe I'm wrong. Only time will tell what the writers decide to do with the deceased.
To read the rest (IMDB form too short) visit: http://custodianfilmcritic.com/american-horror-story-asylum-2-1-2-2/
