I've always enjoyed tales of horror by the lake. Perhaps it's because I grew up near a lake community and found the history of it very interesting. Or maybe it's because sea monsters and the like never get quite as much love as the average vampire, slasher, or ghost.
Regardless, I was excited about this episode. And it premiered on my birthday! (I didn't watch it on that day, as I was off adventuring in Sleepy Hollow and then Halloween shopping, but still. It meant something to me that something AHS-related was happening on my birthday, and this episode really didn't disappoint!
Lake introduces us to brother and sister Jake and Finn, hanging out with a group of other teens at their family lake house. Jake is apparently heavy into the history of this lake and wants to go diving to check out if the rumors and damming and the like are true...and also to impress a girl his sister doesn't approve of.
Straight off, I was skeptical about the fact that there was a character literally named Finn in an episode about the horrors at the bottom of a lake, but I put that aside as the beginning of the episode for some reason reminded me quite a bit of Sleepaway Camp, which is a movie I really enjoy.
Things play out almost exactly as you would expect. Finn joins Jake on his dive, but Jake is suddenly grabbed by something and is pulled under. Finn spends the next several months in a mental health facility, as no one believes her story, and the episode picks up again on the day she returns home.
Naturally, Finn can't get what happened to her brother out of her head, and their mother, Erin, is starting to see some crazy shit of her own. Water starts running at all strange times, as if being controlled by some outside force (or a really desperate plumber). When Jake finally appears to her begging her to find him, she's convinced she can find true closure at the lake house, and, naturally, seeing what she saw, Finn believes her and goes along on the journey, despite it being triggering. They don't initially tell Jeffrey because he is a weird combination of completely unaffected but also offended by absolutely everything.
Long story short, Erin and Finn go to the lake house and find proof of Jake's fate, and also talk to a random woman who looks exactly like this annoying customer that comes into my work on an almost daily basis claiming we all should all bow down to her and do basically everything short of wiping her ass because she went to school with one of the owners of the company, even though said man went to an all boys boarding school. This woman tells them that the damning damming rumors that Jake was investigating were true and tells them the story of the evil man that forced construction of the dam, and the people he murdered, including the protestors he chained to a brick and drowned, to make it happen.
Now, my only real complaint about this episode is how the M. Night Shyamalan Twist Of The Week plays out. It turns out, Jake was taken because his father Jeffrey is actually a Prescott, a direct descendant of the man who killed to make his damn dam dreams come true. Now, I understand people changing their last names over controversial events, but Jeffrey seemed beyond proud of who he was and what his ancestor did, as well as the fact that the family had a lake house in the town that was literally named after his real family. It's a little unbelievable that this man, who again, seemed very proud of where he came from and not embarrassed at all, never discussed his background with his wife and children, even leaving out the murder part, and also that there were no legal documents anywhere where his family could have found them, that contained his true family name. I mean, it was one of the better twists this season, but it didn't make a whole lot of sense in the long run. I suppose it's better than having Finn turn out to be a mermaid, though. Because with that name and how predictable some of the stuff on this show has been...I can't deny I was waiting for it.
Things end, fairly predictably, with Jeffrey getting pulled under by the monstrous remains of the people his ancestor killed. There's not much here that hasn't already been done, or couldn't have been guessed, but for some reason I find this a really solid episode. I'm not sure why, but it was just very clean to me and done very well. Much like last season's superior entry Feral, I feel like Lake actually could have been spawned into an entire season, or at least a central storyline in one. It was very well acted and the backstory was very well thought out...I just got the sense that with a little more something, it could have been phenomenal.
And so it goes...another season of Stories in the books, and I have to say, I was pretty impressed. This show really redeemed itself for me after last season's obsession with young adult melodrama and weird fanservice. I don't know if Stories can ever truly be on par with the peak seasons of the main AHS, but this season is definitely worth the watch. Even the weaker episodes (which to me were really only Facelift and Necro) weren't weak enough to be called terrible.
It's still up in the air as to when the official AHS season 11 will premiere at this point, and honestly, I'm not sure if I'll be reviewing it. I enjoy writing these reviews but I am super pressed for time and energy lately and, now that September is here and October is on the way, I would like to spend my creative energy on other things, rather than feeling tied to writing specific reviews every week. We shall see, though. I think whether or not I review the season will just depend on how I ultimately feel about it.
Until next time, stay spooky, my friends.
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