Recap: American Horror Story Asylum S2 E1 – Welcome to Briarcliff
Let’s jump right in shall we?
This season starts out creepy right away with two lovers named Leo and Teresa (played by Adam Levine and Jenna Dewan-Tatum) walking up to an abandoned Briarcliff Asylum. Teresa loves the creep factor of the place and they decide to sneak inside to look around. After getting rather frisky they do more exploring and find a locked room with a slot in the door. Leo sticks his arm in there to inspect it more and gets his arm ripped clean off by someTHING on the other side of the door.
Flashback to 1964 and we see a gas station attendent named Kit (played by AHS alum Evan Peters) closing up shop for the night. His friends show up and are blatantly being racist. What they have no idea is that Kit is secretly married to an African-American woman named Alma. After he goes back to her for the evening something unexplainable happens. They have an alien encounter/abduction. With the end result being Kit hauled away to Briarcliff Asylum by the local police after them finding Alma’s body chopped up inside the home. He’s now being accused of being the serial killer known as Bloody Face. This is the part that makes me kind of weary about the season. When I think horror I don’t think of aliens right off the bat. This is just the premiere so I’m hoping that this builds to something more interesting.
Reporter Lana Winters comes to Briarcliff to do a story on the bakery there that’s run by Sister Jude (played by another AHS alum Jessica Lange). In actuality Ms. Winters is there to get a glimpse at Bloody Face. Sister Jude seems to be having issues with everyone at Briarcliff, especially Dr. Arthur Arden who seems to have his own agenda going on. Patients are suspiciously disappearing and Sister Jude thinks Dr. Arden is to blame. Ms. Winters gets shown around the grounds a bit and gets separated. She then comes across some of the “missing” patients and after an interaction she wakes up strapped to a patient bed with a halo attached to her head. With a bit of blackmail thrown in, Sister Jude now has Ms. Winters admitted to Briarcliff.
Flash forward to the present and Teresa is still running throughout the abandoned Briarcliff Asylum trying to get out to find help for Leo. In her frantic state she ends up running into none other than Bloody Face.
Soooooooooo, that was interesting. Like I said above, the aliens was a weird touch to include not to mention the microchip in Kit’s neck. Lange’s character still gives off the same authority as her previous one. She was one of the main reasons AHS did so well previously. I have high expectations for this season (along with everyone else) and I think that’s an error on my part. With the way the last season ended I expected a bit more but Ryan Murphy has proved that he is definitely a innovator in different genres and I’m sure that we all (myself included) need to let the story build a bit before we make our ultimate judgement. This episode had it’s scares and more importantly some of the supporting cast was creepy as hell…..and I loved it! They have me intrigued enough to keep me tuned in and hopefully this season will be a great one.
