Three kids head into the woods, decked out with GoPros and selfie sticks. Todd, Sophie, and Milo run a “Roanoke Nightmare” fan site and want to find the house on the final night of the blood moon. They get lost, of course, and see a bloody woman wandering through the woods. She doesn’t know where she is or where her car is, and she ignores the kids’ offers of help. They chase her through the woods, and find a car flipped over. Inside is the woman, but she is very dead. The kids go to the police, but the cops don’t believe them. Officers went out to the car, and found no body. Sophie blames this on a coverup; Milo points out that this is how every horror movie starts out.
Back at the house, Gilliam is annoyed. He has been waiting to hear from Sidney for the last three days. Gilliam is supposed to be there to “shake things up.” Audrey, near hysterics, informs him that everyone is dead. It’s all real: the spirits, the blood moon, the Polks. Gilliam, who did two tours in Afghanistan as part of a SEAL team, ain’t afraid of no ghosts. The three of them decide they must stick together and leave the house, even though it is the most dangerous night of the blood moon. Monet is still out there, and Lee is still desperate to get her video tape back.
It is dusk before the trio make it to the Polk compound. They split up: Gilliam will go start the car; Audrey will look for Monet; and Lee will get the video camera. Gilliam barely starts the process of hot wiring the car before there is blood everywhere. One of the Polks got him. Audrey finds Monet, but Papa finds them, too. He promises to murder them real slow. Audrey makes him repeat himself, on camera, then shoots him dead with a gun she found.
Lee found the camera and goes back to the car, where she finds Gilliam bloody and one of the Polk kids threatening her. He sees the colonists coming, panics, and drives off in the car. I’m not really certain what happened to Lee at this point, but Audrey and Monet grab the camera that Lee dropped, and run. Lee, as it turns out, is somewhere in the woods, alone and scared and in bad shape, physically. In the grainy video footage, the Gaga Witch approaches, and Lee eats what she is offered.
It is night when Monet and Audrey make it back to the house, where they lock themselves inside and bicker about petty nonsense. Audrey thinks that, because Lee left the video behind, she must be dead. Monet is suspicious about Lee telling Audrey that they need the video to prove their innocence, and she plays back the video, fast forwarding to the part where Lee confesses to murder.
The kids posted the video they got and it went viral. Excited by this, they go back into the woods, determined to prove they are not liars. They find Lee in the woods and approach her cautiously. Lee slashes Todd’s throat, and the other two run, screaming. They trip, fall, and look up to see the stick dolls hanging from the trees. They continue running and find the production trailer, and more bodies. Someone approaches them, and they barricade themselves in the trailer. Gilliam, as it turns out, is not yet dead. He bangs on the door, but the kids are too terrified to let him in. Eventually, the noise subsides and they check out the trailer. They realize they are in the control room, and can see all of the cameras that Sidney set up in the house and the woods. They see that everyone is dead, except Audrey and Monet, who are hunkered down in the house. Then they see Lee heading towards the house. Sophie calls the police and insists it is not a prank, but they don’t believe her, and won’t come. She decides it is up to her and Milo to take her down. Cautiously, they leave the production truck.
Audrey and Monet are still trying to agree on what to do. Their bickering is interrupted by a noise. Audrey thinks this is it, and she doesn’t want to die. They leave the bedroom and find Lee standing there, staring at the ceiling. “You don’t belong here, your vile presence,” she murmurs. Monet becomes pissed, so Lee throws her off the landing. She is impaled on a broken piece of wood. Turning to Audrey, Lee insists she must be cleansed. They fight, but Audrey, somehow, gets away. She runs from the house and tries to get into the cellar, but Lee appears. She delivers a cleaver to Audrey’s neck and kicks her into the cellar.
Sophie and Milo have found the house. They sit outside, watching it, trying to put together a plan – and some courage. The colonists appear, torches lit, and disembowel Gilliam. Lee sneaks up on the kids, scaring the hell out of them.
A title card pops up, explaining that what follows is the “raw footage from Todd’s iCloud account.” If the footage was raw, it wouldn’t include multiple camera angles. Also, why would footage from Sophie and Milo’s cameras go to Todd’s account? Whatever, I guess they have other things to worry about: like the fact that they are dragged out in front of the colonists, put on pikes, sprinkled with accelerant, and set on fire.
In the morning, cops rush out to the house. Outside, they find the charred kids on pikes, a disemboweled Gilliam, and a bloody cleaver on the ground. Inside they find the bodies of Monet and Dominic. It is surely just a matter of time before they find Shelby and Matt. On the edge of the woods, they find Lee, passed out but alive. She wakes, scared, and screams. The cops promise they will get her to a hospital and help her over to the police car. They find another one alive: Audrey. She is crawling out of the cellar, and one of the cops picks her up. She asks if he is real, and he assures her he is as he carries her to the car. As soon as she sees Lee, Audrey grabs the cop’s gun. She is shot down in a hail of gunfire before she can get a shot off.
And that’s it. That’s the end of the “Roanoke Nightmare.” Next week’s finale will see Lee on trial, presumably for Mason’s murder, and have her meet with Lana Winters, who regular viewers will remember from the Asylum season. Let’s try to ignore the fact that Lana Winters would probably be in her 70’s or 80’s by now (remember, Asylum ended in the early 1970s). Frankly, it feels like producers this season were really scraping the bottom of the barrel to come up with enough episodes to make it to ten (most of the other seasons are 12-13 episodes). Why else would they throw in the kids in yet another Blair Witch Project homage? I hope that in the finale, we at least get some information on what purpose the Gaga Witch served, other than as a way to get the characters to make sudden personality shifts without needed to explain them.
You can watch the promo for Chapter 10, the season finale, using the player below!
