Triggered by Trump.
Warning: Full spoilers for the episode below.
"There is nothing more dangerous in this world than a humiliated man."
The earliest reports for American Horror Story's seventh installment had it centered around an election. Not just any election - THE election. Last year's presidential run between Hillary and Donald. And while it remained unclear what the actual horror aspects of that would be, there were many jokes to be made about how those months of campaigning didn't need anything extra to make them terrifying. Even traumatizing, to get more specific.
This is where American Horror Story: Cult takes its cues. Not just from the truly polarizing aspect of the American political and social landscape right now, but from the true dread and fear that many Americans fear over losing their freedoms, rights, and citizenship in the name of a group of hateful citizens who somehow think the country belongs to them more than it does to others. Cult seems to be, at the outset here, a heightened examination of the aftermath. As always too, with a healthy smattering of satire - half hacky, half gourmet.
There were only small glimpses of a "cult" in the first episode of Cult, "Election Night," as a more apropos title for the season after this first chapter could simply be "Fear," but the opening credits were filled with enough bees and hives to suggest a "dangerous shared ideology." So far, after one episode, it doesn't look like we'll be dealing with cults in the way we all tend to think of them: secret societies and/or backwoods religious doomsday compounds. This season seems to have planted roots in a terrifying social experiment started by a young, slovenly sociopath named Kai (Evan Peters), who seems to admire the fact that society may start to fall in line and hand over their rights because they're afraid.
Truth be told, this type of story would also fit the 9/11-era when that massive and tragic terror attack created a surge of panic and xenophobia that allowed for rights to be denied in terms of arrest, detainment, and surveillance. Still, in the Trump-era it all has a place. I know, or at least hope, future episodes illuminate Kai's motivations a bit more since right now its not fully clear why he's a Trump supporter. We see him cheer on last November's big win for Donald, but what he seems to truly love about Trump as president is the fact that everyone, all over the world, will be scared. He wants people to bend to fear so that they'll hand over the country's keys to a dictator. He really wants this despite the fact that he can also recognize it as a ruse.
The most exhilarating thing about "Election Night," which chose to use last November's presidential election as a springboard and not a full story crutch, is that it's near impossible to tell where the season is headed. American Horror Story generally does season openers well. The trouble happens a little further down the line, but the premieres are usually very enticing. One thing that remains a challenge though, and has really since Freak Show, is that the series no longer seems willing to give us likable characters. It's what happens when a show starts to lean into satire more and more. It was a huge problem in Hotel and Roanoke, contributing to decreased dividends as those seasons progressed and it might be an issue here. We'll have to see.
Aiming, perhaps, to alienate both sides of the political spectrum, Cult introduces us to both "deplorable" Trump supporters - from the Cheeto-eating (and smearing) Dew-drinking Kai to Chaz Bono's handless hillbilly MAGA-capped store clerk (reminiscent of Roanoke's Lot Polk) - and "snowflake" liberals who are unable to function with Trump as president. There's no in-between here as subtlety never stood a chance. One character complains about a news report not coming with trigger warning while others berate their own partners for not voting (or voting for Jill Stein). We're getting a hyper-condensed sampling of all the extremes here.
As we kick things off though, and this feels fairly exciting, Cult acts like a weird shadow war between Kai and Sarah Paulson's Ally - a woman whose severe phobias and anxieties resurface in the wake of Trump's win. While Ally finds herself unable to deal with her fears and inter-turmoil (to the chagrin of her wife, Alison Pill's Ivy), Kai wages a secret assault on his own neighborhood with the intent of spreading panic and paranoia. She's easily provoked and he's trying to provoke. And in the midst of it all - CLOWNS!
Why is American Horror Story dabbling in clowns so directly after a season like Freak Show, you might ask? Well, firstly, the show isn't forgetting Twisty. Not at all. Now that all of Horror Story has been firmly established to take place in the same universe, Twisty is also very much a leaping off point. Using this, along with Ally's son's fascination with Twisty and her refueled coulrophobia, the show brings clowns back in a big way - sprinkling a bit of that viral "clowns in the woods" phenomenon from last year into the mix.
Through the lens of Ally's fear, clowns begin rampaging, stalking, and performing obscene acts in front of her. By the end of the episode though, the son, Oz (Cooper Dodson), sees this clown gang murder their next door neighbors. Or did he? Are they real or is the show already attempting to gaslight us by presenting unreliable witnesses. Meanwhile, Billie Lourd's character, Winter, seems to be both at odds with and in cahoots with Kai. The two of them seem to represent a perverse cooperation by both sides of the political battleground in an attempt to mortify and trick the masses
Winter, as Ally and Ivy's nanny, is the main reason it feels like Ally is being purposefully targeted and her scenes with Oz, where she makes him look at online pictures of dead bodies stands as the most disturbing element of the entire episode. Hell, it's the most disturbing scene over the past few seasons. It's as if she's trying to cultivate and nurture a serial killer right under his parents' noses.
The Verdict
Cult is off to a promising start with an episode that, at best, attempts to examine, through a satirical and sinister lens, post-election paranoia. During its low spots however it can feel on-the-nose to the point of being rather reductive and toothless.
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