After months of mystifying adverts from FX and a more secretive-than-usual production staff, the American Horror Story Season 6 premiere finally revealed the season’s subtitle: “My Roanoke Nightmare.” Not sure if it was really worth the network going out of its way to hide the premise, as there is nothing particularly shocking about it. What is different about this season is the structure. It is put together like “Making a Murderer” or “Dateline”: talking head interviews with the “real” subjects talking about what happened and how they felt, interspersed with “re-enactments” to illustrate the story.
“My Roanoke Nightmare” is the story of Matt and Shelby Miller, an interracial married couple who have the perfect life. They live in Los Angeles. She is a yoga instructor; he is a pharmaceutical sales rep. When he gets a promotion and she finds out she is pregnant, the couple go out and celebrate. They run into a gang, whose members play the “knock-out” game with Matt and leave him unconscious on the street. At the hospital, the doctors are worried because they don’t know when he might wake up. Shelby insists on seeing him, and as soon as she holds his hand, he starts to wake. It’s nothing supernatural; they just have that strong of a bond. But the stress of the situation causes Shelby to miscarry, and the two no longer feel safe in Los Angeles. They head east, to Matt’s home in North Carolina.
While having the “perfect day” in the woods, they come across a beautiful old farmhouse that was built in 1792 and sits on 20 acres of woodland. It has grand, curving staircases and big round windows that look like eyes. The couple are instantly in love but doubt they can afford it. They attend the auction, where the only other bidders are a trio of rednecks. The Millers win the auction for $40,000 – their entire life savings, but more than double than the opening bid – which pisses off the hillbillies.
Matt loves the country life, but senses Shelby’s reluctance. They are having sex when they hear a growling, generic “scary noise” and loud banging. Outside, Matt discovers torn-apart garbage cans, which he initially attributes to bears or raccoons. Then a trash can sails through the air at him, and Matt thinks the hillbillies are screwing with him. He has faced discrimination in the past, especially living in the south, and the fact that he is black and his wife is white certainly doesn’t win over racists.
The next day, Matt is out running errands when it begins to hail. Shelby, home alone, goes out to watch the hail and discovers that it isn’t tiny chunks of ice – it is hailing human teeth. By the time Matt comes home, the teeth are gone and he convinces his wife that it was just regular hail – he drove through the storm himself. She feels foolish.
Shelby is unconcerned when Matt has to go out of town for work for a few days. He will only be two hours away, and secretly, she is looking forward to some alone time. One night, after dinner, she takes her glass of wine down the hall and thinks she sees two young women walking the same hall. They are gone in an instant and Shelby shakes it off. She goes outside to relax in the hot tub (though it is not on, so I don’t know what the point of it is). Suddenly a hand appears and tries to drown her. She is scared, choking, then suddenly it stops. By the time she can see, whoever it was is gone. She calls the cops, then her husband, who rushes home. Shelby says her attackers wore old costumes of some sort, and carried pitchforks and torches. The officer who took her statement said there was no evidence of another person being there, and suggests Shelby was seeing things. Matt suggests it was the racist hillbillies, and the officer promises to go check up on them, then suggests Matt gets a gun. Matt feels like he is being condescended to.
That night, as Shelby sleeps, Matt again goes to investigate Generic Spooky Noises. He finds a bloody, dead pig on their porch, and decides that is proof that the hillbillies were trying to scare them away. Matt doesn’t tell Shelby; he just buries the pig in the woods and installs security cameras around the property. He has to go back to Raleigh, but calls his sister, Lee, to come stay with Shelby.
Lee and Shelby never really got along. Lee thought that Shelby was “fake;” Shelby thought that Lee was selfish. In an out-of-place “flashback” (out of place for the style of show this season is taking), we learn about Lee’s troubled past. After getting a degree in criminal psychology, she became a cop and was on her way to making detective when she was injured on the job, and became addicted to painkillers. She was fired for taking them while on the beat, and soon after, her husband asked for a divorce and got custody of their child.
Shelby is making dinner when she hears a noise. Foolishly she puts down her knife and goes to investigate. She finds nothing and returns to find her knife gone – it has been stabbed into the slab of meat she is cooking on the stove. Shelby is startled by Lee, who she blames for the knife trick. Lee asks Shelby to refrain from drinking wine in the house so that she doesn’t relapse. She assures Shelby she may no longer have her badge… but she still has her gun.
Lee thought that Shelby was just making up scary stories so she could move back to Los Angeles. Then one night, she wakes to Generic Spooky Noises, and a wine bottle rolls into her room. Thinking it was Shelby messing with her, Lee confronts her, and the two launch into a yelling match. It is around this time that Matt gets an alert on his cell phone. The security camera sensors were triggered, and on the video, he sees people in costume carrying torches towards the house. Matt calls home frantically, but both Shelby and Lee are too absorbed in their fight to notice the phone call – or the shadowy figures that pass by the window carrying torches. With his faith in the police squelched, Matt rushes home.
The ladies stop arguing when Lee hears a creak. Someone is in the house. Lee starts to investigate, Shelby close on her heel, afraid to be alone. They go into the basement, where a dim light glows and painful moaning can be heard. All they find is a TV playing old home movies taken in the forest. The cameraman says “it is close, I can smell it” and finds a man in a pig mask dancing in the woods. The cameraman is next crying, on the ground, before the video cuts to black. Suddenly the lights in the basement go out, and the women discover they are locked in. Shadowy footsteps pass by the tiny basement windows and make stomping noises on the floor above. They are in the house. Shelby suspects they were in the basement for 20-30 minutes. Then everything is quiet, and they go upstairs.
Lee and Shelby find dozens of long, thin tree branches stretched across the foyer. Hanging from the branches are hundreds of crude wooden dolls, not unlike those seen in The Blair Witch Project. Matt gets home after the cops have come and gone. They chalked it up to vandalism, which is about what Matt expects from them. He watches the video and thinks it’s a fake from the hillbillies. Matt thinks they are just trying to scare them into leaving, and Shelby is fine with that. She wants to leave, now. Lee and Matt both believe they shouldn’t be driven out of their own home. Shelby storms out of the house and drives off into the night.
Matt calls Shelby, but as she answers, she looks away and slams into a woman on the road who came out of nowhere. Ignoring Matt, Shelby stumbles from her car, looking desperately for the woman in old-timey colonist clothes. She sees the victim head off into the woods and follows. Not 50 feet into the woods, and the woman disappears. Then Shelby realizes she can’t find her way out. She is lost. She hears a noise and hurries towards it, hoping for help, but instead she finds hundreds more primitive stick dolls. Shelby runs in fear, trips, and realizes the ground is breathing. Like she fell onto the chest of a sleeping giant, the ground in all directions heaves up and down. She runs some more, and sees torches. The colonists are there, forming a circle. Another colonist runs from the woods, screaming, with the top of his head cut off. Shelby screams, and the episode cuts to black.
You can watch the official American Horror Story Season 6 preview below!
