In American Horror Stories: Bloody Mary, the horror of the well-known and sinister urban legend becomes an exploration of pop culture. After all, the specter that appears to kill if someone says her name three times in front of a mirror is part of a generational legacy. In Ryan Murphy’s series, it is too, and it is clear that the director took some inspiration from Candymanby Nia Da Costa which, also uses the element of the folkloric oral story as a starting point.

Both one and the other spectra are variations and consequences of violence. Also of greater horrors that built monsters to the measure of a type of suffering that desecrated innocence.

But, in the argument of American Horror Stories: Bloody Mary, the vengeful ghost lacks the substance and complexity of the murdered enslaved person who returned for retaliation to whom Nia Da Costa gave a new face. The script forces her character to become a shallow version of a much larger horror lore. And what is even worse, in a less elaborate, dense, and dangerous perception of what it could have been.

American Horror Stories: Bloody Mary

American Horror Stories: Bloody Mary, he took the risk of reinterpreting a traditional figure of the horror genre and succeeded in doing so in some of his most compelling scenes. But the rest is a messy combination of unbelievable slasher and ghost story that lacks mystery and structure. By its ending, the episode fails for the same reasons it could have succeeded—the need to relate a look at the terrifying under novel rules. The chapter lacks the audacity to live up to its premise. Perhaps his biggest mistake.

American Horror Stories: Bloody Marya dark tale turned into terror

Despite the fact that the episode can transform the traditional and well-known Bloody Mary into a terrifying story. From the disturbing game of the supernatural figure that manifests itself to kill to the threat that hangs over a trio of incredulous teenagers. The setting could have been as much that of a supernatural horror story as that of a slasher first level.

The plot tries to mix both things. American Horror Stories: Bloody Mary During his first ten minutes, he transits through the urgent sensation that evil is about to manifest itself. At best, it show the strange context that surrounds it and also what can happen once it is more than a threat.

But the argument loses time — and substance — in long explanatory dialogues without meaning or depth. He does so as he delves into this supernatural presence, halfway between collective horrors and an element of evil. The Bloody Mary of American Horror Stories: Bloody Mary he is a shadowy figure who goes in search of victims. But she, at the same time, is also a hostage to an endless cycle of perceptions about the terrifying.

The failed look at a sinister history

The script does not manage to balance the two points of view with ease and, in fact, there are moments when the story stops in the middle of the confusion. Is the ghost trying to exact revenge or be vindicated? What is the message that this creature seeks to express, halfway between a nightmare and an unresolved desire for justice? American Horror Stories: Bloody Mary it doesn’t explain it, and one of the episode’s biggest problems is using the metaphor of the mirror as a line that slides into dark places of the human mind. Could Bloody Mary be just the most profound expression on terror? A form of mass hysteria?

Such a suggestive premise could turn the episode into a search for meaning in the dark. But he doesn’t, and in fact, much of the storytelling ties into the idea of ​​a large-scale cat-and-mouse game. Once summoned, Bloody Mary cannot be stopped… On the contrary, it only gets stronger as it kills. But the script, which too often ignores its own rules, loses considerable effectiveness in trying to provide background for its creature.

From its origin in slavery —perhaps one of the best-reported moments of the episode—, to the first appearance of the spectrum. American Horror Stories: Bloody Mary takes the thrust of the folk tale to ask questions about the nature of evil, the fearsome, and the invisible. Little by little, however, the character fades into a rare mix of anticlimactic menace and contrived presence. So much so that it causes the story to lose effectiveness, sense and, finally, all its quality as a horror piece.

The night of the dark mirrors in American Horror Stories: Bloody Mary

American Horror Stories: Bloody Mary took the risk of reinterpreting a traditional figure of the horror genre and succeeded only in some of its most compelling scenes. However, the rest are a haphazard combination of slasher hardly credible and a ghost story that lacks mystery and structure.

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For his last sequences, the profusion of mirrors reflecting evil’s face is tedious. And worse: they destroy the atmosphere that the chapter created with care and good taste. For your end, American Horror Stories: Bloody Mary it fails for the same reasons it could have succeeded. The need to relate a look at the terrifying under novel rules. But the episode lacks the audacity to live up to its premise. Perhaps his biggest mistake.

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