This season we journey to Los
Angeles again with our favorite characters and the delicious addition of Lady
Gaga as the Countess. The setting will
return to the show to it’s roots, the horror being tied to a place, not merely
a building but a living breathing dark force in it’s own right. While I’ll miss Jessica Lange, Lady Gaga
proves a worthy replacement as a beautiful demoness.
The series opens with two Swedish
young women leaving a yellow taxi to check into Hotel Cortez. Obviously, they didn’t vet the place on Trip
Advisor and are disappointed to learn the hotel is close to none of the
attractions they flew around the world to see. They enter the luxurious lobby of red and gold
observing the place is “quiet as a tomb.” They wait for the receptionist to refund their
money. Kathy Bates, as Iris is a fashion-challenged middle age woman in huge
plastic glasses. She flatly explains
there are no refunds. The women decide the retro place might “be fun.” Iris leads them down long dim hallways
explaining the hotel is a “dead zone” for phones and has no Wi-Fi. Occasional
screams and love making noises are heard. (Run, girls!)
Once along, one woman makes the
trek down the hallways to locate the ice machine. She passes a maid steaming the blood out of a
white sheet. The maid explains,
“Horrible accident in room 51.” Next,
the woman encounters a pale emo child in a black short suit. He points to her to go back. Finally, she finds the ice machine. A jeweled gloved hand appears behind her long
neck, but disappears before the jet-lagged Swede notices.
Upon returning to their room, the
other woman complains of a “dead animal smell” she can’t locate or hid with her
travel candles. The other woman sets
about the room, sniffing for the location of the smell. They strip the bed to find the mattress has
been cut and crudely sutured back together.
Suddenly, a creature emerges with pale rotting skin and dead blue eyes.
Both parties scream!
And now it’s time for the opening
credits! They flash bloody scenes and flashes of the some of the Ten
Commandments in neon. It’s a scary
sequence fortunately without last year’s clowns.
A somewhat apologetic Iris allows
the girls to change rooms. (Even though previously she stated the hotel was
completely full.) The women check into
room 64 and it’s a suite. She informs
them the police are coming to take their statement and they must remain inside
to wait. The woman muses she’s going to
destroy the place with a Yelp review, but for now they have no cell phone or
Internet service. Time passes, at 2:24 am the radio turns on by itself to music
and static. The woman looks around the
spacious room for her friend Aggie. She
calls out, and sees her on the bathroom floor in the presence of two emo kids
who appear to be biting her.
Two detectives enter the hotel. They are briefed that the victims were
chloroformed the instant they entered the room. The scene is terrifying. A woman is on top of
a man in sexual congress, but a curtain rod has pieced the woman’s heart. The
man underneath is alive but his eyes and tongue have been cut out and placed in
an ashtray. He has been dosed with male fertility drug and they will be unable
to move him without medical help. The
man and the corpse will need to leave to the hospital together! Around the bed there are pictures of a happy
family, each with their eyes cut from the photos. The white detective theorizes the couple was
cheating and this was a sick form of revenge.
The detective, John (actor Wes Bentley)
enters the precinct and asks a uniformed cop for a file on a man named Gamboa.
It’s a grisly murder, which occurred about a month prior to a forty five year
old “Oscar blogger.” The man was tortured and sexually assaulted then killed.
John is interrupted from his research by a Face Time call with his young daughter.
He insists he’s not too busy to read her a bedtime story, Little Women. A
uniformed cop says he has an urgent call, he tells her to can’t be interrupted.
As John leaves the office, a man calls stating, “Hotel Cortez, room 64, I’m
going to do it again!”
A young man with bleached hair and
white sunglasses enters the hotel and asks for a room. Iris explains the
“posted” price of $30 is no longer valid and asks for $150. The man is
agitated, but pays. Iris says, “It’s
your lucky day.” Then she proceeds to give him the key to room 64. Once he’s
gone, Sarah Paulsen emerges from the lobby. She tells Iris, “I got dibs on that
one, I haven’t seen one so sweet in a long time.” This can’t be good.
The hipster walks down the long
hallway, hearing distant screams and sex noises. When he gets to his room, he
places his heroine kit on the bed and gets busy shooting up. As the drug begins
to take effect, he sees a maid who explains how she can remove any stain.
Suddenly, the creature like man from the bed emerges with a screw like phallus
attached to his crotch. He rapes the hipster as he screams, “HELP ME!”
Detective John enters the hotel,
instantly recognized as a cop by Iris, She explains room 64 is “taken”. Denis O’Hare, bald, and dressed in a sparkly
gown enters and introduces himself as “Liz Taylor.” She agrees to take him upstairs.
Meanwhile, Sally, (Sarah Paulsen)
enters room 64 to witness the rape. She tells the man, “The more you scream,
the more he likes it!” She asks him to look at her, and tell her, “I love you
Sally!” She explains that will make all of this go away. (Is she dead? Her
outfit is retro and maybe she’s a resident ghost like in Season 1) She lights a
cigarette, he says the magic words and the creature is gone.
Liz Taylor tries to get a read on
John. “What are you doing here? You’ve lost something?” His cape of blue chiffon and sequins billows
down the hallway as they get to room 64.
It’s mysteriously empty! John
searches the suite with his gun drawn but finds nothing, even in the red tiled bathroom.
Under the bed, the hipster lies,
presumably dead. John must be crazy
tired, because he lies down on the bed and sleeps. He is awoken by the clock
radio at 2:24am. He sees the emo kid in
the room and gives the boy chase. He calls him “Holden!” but the boy disappears
down a hallway.
Neon flashes, “Why aren’t we having
sex right now!” over a large bed. A record plays as Lady Gaga; the Countess
primps for a night out. Matt Bomer rises
from the bath with a full view of the moon! The couple proceeds to do a massive
amount of cocaine then head out. The Countess is dressed in a flowing crimson
gown with a black veiled hat and Donavan (Bomer) is gorgeous in all black and
eyeliner. They enter what appears to be
Woodlawn Cemetery for “movie night in the park” the feature is “Nosferatu” the
1922 classic silent vampire movie.
An Asian woman stares at Donavon
and the Countess looks at her encouragingly then gestures the universal sign
for cunnilingus! The two couples leave
the park and head to the hotel. (Wow, that’s never happened to me at movie
night in the park, maybe it’s a special LA thing!) The couple seems excited for
a night of forbidden sex as they follow the Countess and Donavon up to their suite.
Three of the group waits naked on the bed as the Countess enters wearing
underwear, a black veil and a smile! Carnal exercises commence and culminate
with the Countess and Donavon on top of their new friends.
They look at each other and proceed
to slit the throats of the unsuspecting couple have barely enough time to
scream in surprise. The Countess and
Donavon feast on the fresh blood. The
Countess coos, “And you didn’t want to go out tonight!” But Donavon is a weary,
and says, “It’s not the getting ready, but the cleaning up that I hate.” The
Countess soothes him saying they will get housekeeping to deal with the blood
bath.
The scene is truly horrifying and reminiscent
of myths of the sixteenth century Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Bathory de Ecsed
who allegedly feasted on the blood of young women to preserve her youth and may
have been the most prolific female serial killer in history. From her, the
legend of Dracula and vampires was created.
Iris wheels an old-fashioned room
service cart into the ballroom. Inside
lighted cages are the two Swedish women. (The one in the bathroom was wounded
not dead.) Iris chastises them for their “drug use” and makes them a disgusting
milkshake of oysters, livers and kidneys! Iris takes out a beer bong type device to
force feed them. (Just like Gitmo!) Sally
enters the ballroom and asks Iris to “show a little compassion.” Iris rails against Sally, “I’m stuck here
because of you, and I’m done! Do it yourself!” Iris leaves. Sally approaches one of the cages. She opens
the door and the woman runs as the other woman yells, “Don’t leave me Vendela!”
Vendela runs up stairs frantically trying to find the exit, instead she nearly
runs into the Countess. The Countess
dressed all in white, slits her throat; killing her instantly and leaving a
single drop of blood on her right cheek. She chastises Iris, “This cannot happen
again!”
Detective John Lowe takes a moment
to gather his thoughts before heading inside his home. Inside, he is greeted by his wife physician
Alex (Chloe Sevigny) and his young daughter. She notices he seems distracted but John
insists he’s okay. Alex must leave to
make house calls, and references her annoyance at anti-vaccinators whose kids
are developing whooping cough. Once alone, John and his daughter agree to go
out for sushi.
At dinner, John’s daughter asks
about her missing brother Holden. She asks her father if he can remember his
face, because she is having difficulty with remembering him outside of her
dreams. John replies he does remember
Holden but seems heartbroken over his daughter’s statement. He gets an urgent
text from Alex giving him an address and command, “Help me!”
John rushes to the location and
instructs his daughter to stay in the car under the supervision of a policeman.
John enters the large home with his gun
drawn for the second time this episode. The detective receives a call from the
same man, “I told you I’d do it again!” Outside,
the policeman hears something in the bushes and goes off chasing it, leaving
the young girl alone. She decides to follow her dad into the house. What could go wrong?
John makes his way through the
empty house, then sees a figure in black and orders him to stop. The figure
disappears. His daughter finds a room where two men are tied to two bedposts,
seemingly deceased and disemboweled. The little girl screams and John runs to
find her and the murderous scene.
John has a flashback to the year
2010. He and his family are at the Santa
Monica pier enjoying a family day. He
takes his son Holden to the carousel ride and assists him on a horse with
yellow hoofs. John is momentarily
distracted by his phone when he looks up to see his son the boy has
disappeared. It’s every parent’s worst nightmare. He cries out for his son, but the boy has
vanished without a trace.
Back home, in the present, Alex
theorizes someone has hacked her phone in order to lure John to the location of
the bodies. Alex admits she is relieved
to see John go since his resemblance to her missing son is at times unbearable.
Both parents secretly hope the boy is still alive, somewhere. The police will be protected Alex and John’s
daughter in his absence.
A black SUV pulls up to the Hotel
Cortez. A man and his tween son get out accompanied by
a blonde woman in blue. Iris greets the
new arrivals and is informed the man is Will Drake (actor Cheyenne Jackson) and
his son Laclan, the new owners of the Hotel. Drake tells the blonde relator he
intends to live there, in the penthouse. Iris turns to Liz Taylor in horror, stating,
“We’ll be turned out!”
Drake opens the drapes of the
penthouse, exposing a naked Donavon to the bright light! He growls, “Go away!” Donavon runs to the Countess explaining, “Some
New Yorker is throwing us out!” The
Countess meets Drake to smooth things over. They discuss a sculpture in the room and
Drake’s work as a fashion designer. Laclan
snoops around the Countess’s record collection. Drake proclaims, “This place
speaks to me, it sings!”
The Countess suggest Donavon show
Drake the “light sculpture” while she entertains the boy. (Is the light
sculpture the crazy cages that held the Swedish women in the ballroom?) Laclan
says to her, “People aren’t supposed to live in hotels. She replies, “Maybe,
this place is special.” The Countess tries to soften the boy up, stating she
used to live in New York. Laclan demurs, saying, “I’m not supposed to talk to
strangers.” She insists on showing him something cool that will “just take a
moment.” (Never a good thing when someone says that!)
The Countess leads the boy down the
hallway and he’s not impressed until she reveals a secret passage, which opens
to white lite room. The emo children are
there, playing video games. Huge candy
machines dominate the room. The Countess
introduces Holden, who looks the same age as the day he disappeared. He says to
Laclan, “Want to play?” (Just like the twins in the Shining, “Come play with
us, forever!” Creepy!)
Iris expresses her frustration
about the new owner to Donavon who is revealed to be her son. He shrugs, “Maybe
it’s time to let go.”
The screen tells us it’s 1994 and
Iris waits in a car while the song “Downtown” plays on the radio. Frantic, she
enters the Hotel Cortez and begs Liz Taylor at reception to know the room where
he son just checked in. He sighs, “This is a “No-Tell Mo-tell lady!” But
suggests he might take a cash bribe. Upstairs, Sally and Donavon shoot up and
share a needle. Donovan passes out afterwards and Sally looks in the mirror and
crazily applies dark red lipstick. There is wild knocking at the door, and
livid Iris enters demanding Sally call 911.
Sally shrugs, saying she took the same product and dose and she is fine.
Sally leaves the room. Iris finds Sally
and pushes her out the window, she falls about ten stories and dies. (Knew she
was dead!)
The Eagles “Hotel California” plays
in the background. (Hotel California and Hotel Cortez have the same initials!)
Iris goes back to Donavan to find the Countess dressed in a black ball gown cradling
his head and cooing, “Your son has a jawline for days…”
The last scene shows John checking
in the Hotel Cortez, as the song warns, “You can check out anytime you like,
but you can never leave!”
The first episode is definitely the
scariest and bloodiest since the first two seasons. The body count of this
episode is six and the level of horror and tension was off the charts. The
costumes and lighting are definitely up to Lady Gaga standards. It seems she
fits naturally into her role as a super villain. I can’t wait to see how the myths and
disturbing murders weave together to bend reality into sheer terror and horror!
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