Thursday, August 12, 2021

My Review of American Horror Stories: "Feral"

 


Written And Directed by Manny Coto

Feral (re Jay/Addy): "Who are these people?"
Jacob: "Dinner."

After hitting something of a high with the previous episode, this one while enjoyable felt like it went a bit backwards. I mean its arguably than some of the first four episodes but not by much. Anyways getting on with the review.

Happy couple Jay (Aaron Tveit) and Addy Gantz (Tiffany Dupont) take their son, Jacob (Colin Tandberg) on an outdoors vacation in the woods in a lovely park and initially, it appears that nothing out of the ordinary has happened.

That soon changed when Addy spotted a mangled deer in the woods and Jay lost their son. Cut to a decade later, the grieving couple divorced and their lives ruined, it seems that Jay and Addy might get a chance to reunite with their son, thanks to skilled hunter, Birch (Blake Shields) who feeds them a story about a cartel and human trafficking.

It's not long until Birch reveals himself to be a fraud and the episode itself bares it's teeth by having Birch die at the hands of a Feral. With the title of this episode and the obvious influence of Wrong Turn, it's apparent that cannibals are on the loose.

This was also where Cody Fern's Australian park ranger, Stan Vogel came in handy. Stan basically gave Jay and Addy an exposition dump on what really happens at National Parks and when I was convinced that he was going to murder the grieving couple, Stan only went and got murdered by the Ferals himself.

As for Jay and Addy, they did get to reunite with Jacob but what a horrible ending for the pair of them. Usually in these situations, at least one of then would've made it out of the episode alive but both Jay and Addy found themselves on the menu thanks to their son. I'm genuinely surprised that happened.

- Aaron Tveit is the first actor to play two different characters on this season. While I preferred Adam, Jay was the more sympathetic character.
- It was nice to let this episode to have Cody Fern use his own accent even though he had less screen time than expected.
- They mentioned the Wild Men in this episode as they did in the Christmas one.
- Chronology: Ten years did pass within this one.

Feral felt like a little bit of a step down compared to the high standard of the previous episode. However the lead couple were likable enough, making their fate all the more horrible and while it would've been nice had he gotten more scenes, Cody Fern did a solid job as Stan. 

Rating: 7 out of 10

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