American Horror Story: Hotel has got to be one of the new season’s most anticipated series. Perhaps Lady Gaga has something to do with it?
First of all, the hotel set built on the 20th Century Fox lot is nothing short of impressive. I found that the fisheye lens used in some of the wide-angle shots provides an eerie perspective well suited to the show’s topic. In essence, the audience views the action as if peering through a hotel door’s peephole.
Immediately, we’re drawn in to the creepiness of the Hotel Cortez as two new guests, both pretty blondes from Europe, check in. They are given a room that is beset by a foul odor, like that of a dead animal, one of the girl’s remarks. The smell emanates from the bed, and the girls discover the mattress has been stitched up. One of the girls cuts it open only to reveal a rotting, demon creature.
Needless to say, the girls demand another room.
Meanwhile, Kathy Bates plays Iris, the unpleasant front-desk clerk who escorts the two unhappy guests into Room 64, where Howard Hughes would stay at Los Angeles’ famed Chateau Marmont. “This one we never rent out,” Iris says.
Wes Bentley plays John, a detective who on the prowl to uncover some strange murders only to receive a phone call that directs him to the same Room 64. However, John already has a personal tragedy to deal with, as later we learn his son Holden is missing. But a kid John sees roaming the hotel hallways looks oddly like Holden. Could it be him?
Already, we see many who enter Room 64 end up slaughtered and are never to be seen again. John survives, but certainly something odd has happened to him.
Then, finally, more than halfway through Episode One, Lady Gaga makes her first appearance, dressed in red, black lace and diamonds. She is magnetic, and with her lover Iris’ son immediately lures a necking couple at an outdoor movie theater (Hollywood Forever Cemetery?) into an extremely bloody, and ultimately deadly, orgy.
American Horror Story’s 5th season opens spectacularly with all the blood a vampire could want, set at a deadly hotel full of supernatural disturbances. Let’s not forget Sarah Paulson who plays a ghostly heroin junky, as we flashback to a time when all of our characters seemingly met. It looks like the madam of the hotel, Gaga, had a hand in all of their fates.
Although we miss Jessica Lange playing the center of evil, Gaga delivers a disturbingly brilliant performance for her “Little Monsters” as well as the rest of us. The envelope is pushed to the edge in only the way Gaga can.