American Horror Story: Cult - Episode 1 Election Night (Review)

Donald Trump is now the 45th President of the United States. "Fuck you world!" Evan Peter's Kai Anderson screams to the tv. "Freedom!" Welcome to American Horror Story: Cult.

Sarah Paulson as Ally Mayfair-Richards

With Cult we open on election night 2016 when Donald Trump became the 45th president of the United States. We are presented with two different groups of reactions to the news. First, we have Kai Anderson, played by Evan Peters, who feels emboldened by the new president. When the results are announced he jumps around his living room yelling freedom and humps his TV. 

We then cut to the home of Ally Mayfair-Richards, played by Sarah Paulson, as she and her wife Ivy, played by Alison Pill, watch in horror at the results with a group of their friends. We learn that Ally is prone to a list of phobias including clowns, holes, and confined spaces to name a few. She has been living incident free for awhile until  the anxiety she feels after the election triggers her phobias to resurface. We go back to Kai as he is taking the opportunity of the fear people are now living in after the election to push his own unknown agenda. This is the set up for the season.

American Horror Story: Cult is already shaping up to be another divisive season for the show I'm sure. Hats off to Murphy and Falchuk for sticking to their guns and bringing in the politics even with the over-saturation we have in our lives already, but they have something to say and they're going to say it. Some of the stand out moments that have stuck with me after my first watch were in the opening election sequence. We get the typical AHS flare with witty dialogue such as Ally yelling, "I won't believe anything until I hear it from Rachel Maddow. She's the only one I trust!" and Kai blending Cheetos and rubbing them on his face (somehow this doesn't come off as cheesy) to taunt his sister (so we think?), Winter Anderson (Billie Lourd). All of these moments feel like the show we know, but this season also has an overarching feeling of dread and a sense that the story is grounded in our own reality.

John Carroll Lynch as Twisty the Clown

Politics aside this first episode definitely brings the horror. Shortly after the election reactions we cut to a parallel scene of Twisty's first appearance in the premiere of Freak Show. This time around we are in a modern setting as a young couple are interrupted by the clown as he then proceeds to murder the boyfriend and chase the girlfriend into a broken down bus that should be familiar to AHS veterans. This scene brilliantly faked us out making us think we were watching a repeat from murder, then it's actually a recreation of a comic book based on Twisty that Ally and Ivy's son is reading (sorry guys it's not real). This of course triggers Ally's clown phobia causing her to have a panic attack. Another highlight of this episode is the way that they film Ally's breakdowns. They move the camera in close with very shallow depth of field creating a sense of claustrophobia for the viewer.

Billie Lourd as Winter Anderson

Now to another stand out performance. Billie Lourd is a new addition this year making the transition from Scream Queens and she does not disappoint. Her portrayal of Winter Anderson is delightfully creepy even in every day actions something just seems off about her. A great scene showcasing her performance is when she interviews to be the Mayfair-Richards' new babysitter. This scene is intercut with an extremely unsettling scene of Kai basically interrogating her about her biggest fears and pleasures (including a story about anal cause of course). She reveals that what she fears the most is him. We are meant to infer that Winter will be his insider to the family.

This leads to what is possibly Evan Peter's the biggest performance of the show so far. Even his portrayal of Tate in Murder House, as much as I hated that character, did not make me feel as uneasy as Kai. A particularly disturbing scene sees Kai speak out at a hearing to extend police hours to patrol a Jewish center in the city. Kai stands up in front of the panel and gives a haunting speech about fear. "Above all, humans love fear. The fear that over time we have honed and polished, and built up, brick by brick, until it stands before us every day as tall as the Trump Tower." He continues, "Fear is currency. It has value. We don't need more cops. We need less. We don't need to protect the Jewish Community Center. We need to let them blow it up! Fear will release them from their desires and their ambitions and their bullshit needs! And then they will come running to us like children in a feverish nightmare." This scene is particularly poignant taking into consideration the current state that the country has found itself in and brings home what seems to be the point of this whole season. Fear is currency.

Evan Peters as Kai Anderson

The theme is carried over in a series well constructed sequences that play through the rest of the episode. This is where the horror of Cult's premiere really shines. First we get a scene in a grocery store where Ally is shopping one night. The store is empty except for one clerk, played by Chaz Bono, who says he is happy to finally have a patriot in the white house and puts on a Make America Great Again hat. The irony of the choice of actor is not lost on me. Ally ignores the comment and continues to shop until a series of increasingly creepy events begin to happen that culminate into her witnessing a two clowns having sex in the produce aisle (yes, really) and eventually being chased to her car by another knife wielding clown with a horrifying mask made of three faces. When she gets to her car she's in full breakdown mode only to find another clown in her back seat causing her to slam on the gas and crash into a pole.

The tension of the episode continues as the police cannot find any evidence of the clowns who attacked Ally in the store (of course they can't). The episode escalates more as Kai finds his way to a group of Latin(x) workers hanging around a truck. He walks toward them singing "La cucaracha" and proceeds to pull out a condom. He pees in the condom filling it like a water balloon (so subtle Kai), then throws the condom at the workers saying they aren't welcome in this country to bring drugs and crime. He continues to taunt them until they charge him and begin to beat him. He of course has an accomplice videoing the exchange. One can only assume he'll use that in the future to try to set himself up as a victim. With that we have another example of Murphy and Fulchuk drawing directly from recent events in the news cycle.

Ally continues her spiral into mental breakdown as she now has another clown encounter, this time at the butchery she owns with her wife. After seeing a crumpet surrounded by severed fingers ooze blood on her plate, she turns to see a clown standing behind the counter masturbating (apparently there's an epidemic of horny clowns). After Ally storms through the butchery having another panic attack Ivy runs to her side only to reveal that everything is normal and the crumpet is now a perfectly fine soufflé (seriously, this can't be all in Ally's head that's not how this show goes). Ivy asks her if she has been taking her medicine to which the answer is no.

This set up leads us to the most disturbing scene of the episode. Winter is babysitting Ozzie, Ally and Ivy's son, and she notices him drawing a picture of Twisty stabbing someone. She asks him if he's ever seen a real dead body and proceeds to show him videos of real killings online (wtf Winter). They are interrupted as an ice cream truck parks in front of the house. The clowns who attacked Ally in the grocery store get out of the truck and break into the house across the street. Winter takes Ozzie to investigate (worst babysitter ever) and hoists him up on her shoulders so he can peak through the window of their neighbour's home. Ozzie watches in horror as what unfolds is basically a scene straight out of the purge, but with clowns. The clown with the triple head mask slits the husbands throat as the rest proceed to hack at him. His wife is screaming in horror underneath a gag as she can do nothing but watch. The triple head clown dips his fingers in the husband's blood and draws a smiley face on the wall. The clowns see Ozzie watching and walk forward in unison staring at him.

        

When Ally and Ivy arrive the police are already on the scene. After sending Ozzie off with a police officer, Winter informs the mothers that their son is lying about what he saw and shows them the Twisty comic saying that she found him looking at the police cars holding the comic. Now Ivy believes that their son is also hallucinating. The episode ends with Ally lying in bed as a noise can be heard. She asks Ivy if she heard it, but Ivy is not in bed with her. She turns over to see the three headed clown standing over her.

All in all American Horror Story: Cult - Episode 1 Election Night grabbed my attention right from the beginning. The story is cohesive and grounded. The characters are interesting and very flawed. The horror is intense and downright disturbing at times. This is, in my opinion, one of the strongest opening episodes in the series and I can't wait to see where the story goes from here!

I give American Horror Story: Cult - Election Night 4.5 out of 5 cauldrons!