Well, “My Roanoke Nightmare” continues to entertain.
It starts off kind of where last week’s show left off, but not exactly. Last week’s show ended with Shelby is running amuck in the woods in pursuit of Kathy Bates’ character who literally bounced off Shel’s car when she was trying to escape the house. She gets lost and is confronted by a man with the top part of his head missing; he sees her and falls to her knees. The end.
This weeks show starts of with her still lost in the woods but she walks upon a crucifixion or purification scene in which. The scalped man is tied and nailed, chest first to a much larger version of one of those Blair Witch looking twig figurines we we were introduced to last week. Kathy Bates’ character is the head of this puritanical coven, is it?…. and she has has Igor hunchback counterpart which looked something like Lady Gaga in bloody make up. And whoever or whatever this person represents she’s egging on Kathy Bates’ urging of these angry, torch welding phantasmas. He died something illegal with a pig and the villagers slap on pig’s head (a fresh kill by the looks of it) and then he’s not crucified, rather large figurine is turned into a spit and the man is burned alive.
Shelby screams, allerting Kathy Bates and company to her presence, a chase ensues and Shelby runs into the driveway and almost into a car, driven by her sister in law, Lee.
Shelby is rushed to the hospital and checked out. She’s okay. Matt comes to see her; tells her that the cops were called…once again…searched the woods and found nothing. They are becoming a total pain in the ass for this local jurisdiction. Anyway, Shelby still thinks its the local yokel inbreds who placed a low bid on the house during episode one.
Lee decides she wants to see her daughter, Flora. So the eight year old ones for a weekend visit and of course immediately, befriends a ghost bonnet wearing ghost child named Priscilla Flora who during a game of hide and seek at the end of her visit, tells her that she’ll kill everyone in the house, and keep Flora alive until the very ends. This enrages Isaac Hayes who has come back from the grave to play Lee’s ex-husband who wants total custody of the child, due to Lees/ boozing fired cop way. He takes Flora off in a heart wrenching good bye scene….child screaming for her mother, mother screaming for her child. Then Lee falls off the wagon and drinks all night long. Matt and Shelby awaken to the all too familiar sound of glass breaking. It’s Flora in the dining room just coming off her bender she’s drunkenly broken a bowl. Everyone looks up and there are knives thrown into the ceiling. Matt and Shelby assume Lee did that, too, but she denied it. Matt takes her upstairs to sleep off the rest of it. She’s awaked a few hours later the image of two 60’s looking nurses staring at her in bed. She shakes her head. They’re gone. Then she hears a noise….runs towards it anyone scared shitless is inclined to do and she sees a bunch of blood pig tails nailed into the wall. She shakes her head. They’re gone. She looks into a mirror and sees the man with the pig head on coming towards her. Again, she shakes her head and he’s gone and apparently Lee is gone too because we don’t see her for a while. More on Lee in a sec.
Its the middle of the night and Matt and Shelby are sleeping. we hear a phone ringing. Loudly. Shelby sleeps through it, but Matt but go down three flights of stares to answer a desk phone that was outdated in 1985. On the other end is a woman moaning. He looks down and sees the phone isn’t even connected to the wall outlet. Then, the moans start coming from the kitchen. Matt turns around and sees a residual haunting of when the house was a senior care facility decade earlier. He sees are the same two nurses that Lee saw by her bed, that Shelby saw cross the hall in front of her that, that went unmentioned in the last last episode. They are oblivious to his presence and they stand around a bed with an elderly woman in it, refusing to take her medicine. One nurse accuses the patient of having a sassy nought so she pulls out a handgun and shoots granny right between the eyes. This elates the sisters who revel in the fact that the patient’s name was Margaret, so they gleefully spray paint a large M on the wall.
The cops are called. Nothing is there. The ugly wall paper chosen to refurbish the house is undisturbed. Matt, says the officer, had to have been having a vivid dream.
Then the next night, they are awakened once again to the sound of that damn pig. Shelby and Matt grab his and hers flashlights and head into the wooded acreage that came with the house, in search of a pig. They get separated and a pig comes out of no where and runs by Matt’s feet and he says nothing. They meet up once again to find the greasy, dripping, gross remnants of the grilled man….but no Kathy Bates lead villagers. The cops were called once again , but this time, the cops see the remnants, but they also think its the handiwork of Papa Hayseed, Ishmael Polk and his odd progeny.
Then one afternoon, Matt and Shelby are looking outside and see a pilgrim looking woman standing there. They of course, run our to see who o what she really is and there’s nothing there, but she was standing on the entrance to a fruit cellar. What do they do? Run down the step ladder and into the old cellar, which is oddly free of cobwebs, spiders and or critters. All they find is a video camera. They take it to their VCR and play it. Its an extreme close up of bearded Denis LO’Hare portraying a academic and author, namedDr. Elias Cunningham, who lived in the house in order to write a Charles Mansonesque murder mystery, based on a pair of pure sisters who were homicidal sociopaths. They took pleasure in killing off old people that had become a burden to their families.
Sad.
Dr. Cunningham explains in the tape that the women only took boarders whose first names could spell out one word M-U-R-D-E-R. But they hadn’t gotten to the R yet. It was just MURDE. And apparently, the five letters couldn’t be covered top by paint, so we see extras placing ugly green floral wall paper over it. The professor on the tape says there are demonic things happening in the house and that he’d been in the fruit cellar for days and didn’t want to step foot back in the house, but somehow, he finds the courage and takes his camera with him. He walks through the darkened youse, demanding that whatever is in the house show itself, well, it does…in a big way.
Think “The Ring”. I know….I don’t get it either.
Matt and Shelby freak and call the bank wanting their money back. A representative comes to meet them . They accuse him of nondisclosure, regarding specific aspects of the house’s past. He claims he’s no real estate agent and can’t help them; the house is theirs until they choose to sell.
So, they’re stuck with the house and the pig noises and Kathy Bates who only roasts by night.
Oh yeah and Lee kidnaps her daughter and brings her back to the house. Really?
There are a couple of other things I should add. A bloodied meat clever is left in their front door and yet another window is broken. It takes down a vase filled with flowers in and mixed with all the flora is a small dirty bonnet….described by the human Flora, who’s new imaginary friend Priscilla said she’d make for her, IF she helped Priscilla stop.
Stop what, we ask.
Flora explains “all the blood”.
Later, we learn that Lee has kidnaped Flora and brought her back to the house and the episodes ends with Flora running into the forrest, at the behest of a ghostly John Smith looking mother fella. Matt, Lee and Shelby run after her and they find her yellow sweater tied atop a newly de-branched tree….a very tall tree….with no sight of young Flora anywhere.
This episode? Intriguing to make me look forward to episode 3 next week.
Now, there are still major plot holes, and scary things that happen this couple won’t tell people., much less each other. I’m finding if I watch this show as a civilian and throw logic out the window one of the few windows unbroken in the house. And don’t I wish I were the window and glass purveyor in that vicinity.
As for Lady Gaga character as the Igor character? Maybe Im right. Gaga’s name was featured as a guest star.
