Almost a year has passed since the promise of a good story, and it’s a very scary one we’ve been waiting for. The fourth season of American Horror Story (labelled Freak Show) delivers after the interlude, and this time is at it superbly, as shivers shroud our senses from this chilling new season premiere titled “Monsters Among Us”.
The chapter begins with a new mystery where we enter side by side following the milkman, Bill Palmer. He leads us to what seems the worst of all things. Excellent sound editing makes us feel that death is near. Stress, panic and sorrow fill in the air. Our hearts are racing, but they do not show us the “monster” we should be afraid of. We are doomed to wait until the right moment.
The story takes place in a town called Jupiter, Florida in 1952, the setting for all 13 scheduled episodes of Freak Show. Jupiter is a small town with a lot of old school values. It appears if you look even slightly different in this town you’ll need to fix yourself or remove yourself, and the new cabaret show which arrives is threatening the residents; they do not wish to blend with the “freaks”.
Jessica Lange, one of the biggest actresses of our time, is a standout star again this season. This time she plays the role of Elsa, the director of a cabaret show. Lang assures us that only if we decide to enter the cabaret we will learn the secrets that lie within. Elsa is the kind of woman that will do anything to get what she wants, unafraid to use her sexuality in the process. It seems like she doesn’t have any weaknesses, but if you manage to make it to the end of the episode, you may be surprised.
She takes under her wing the new threat in town – Siamese twins (played by Sarah Paulson) that were kept a secret by their own mother. But the truth is that they are just girls who murdered their mother in order to set themselves free form captivity. So are they the innocent abused girls as they seem, or maybe they are the monsters everybody believes them to be?
We are further exposed to other cabaret participants, each one with their own special deformity, and of course we’re also witnesses to the image of the new serial killer in town, also a freak. He is dressed as a clown with a creepy mask, somewhat reminiscent of “It” from Stephen King’s adapted movie miniseries of the 1990s, but a lot more physically deformed.
All these characters considered one must wonder, who is the real freak? Who is good and who is bad? Which one of them are just misunderstood and which are cold-blooded killers? Is the one that seemed like a monster actually the most normal of all freaks? We’ll have to wait for more instalments from Freak Show to get our answers.
Naama Shinman
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very beautiful writing! 🙂