‘American Horror Story: Asylum’ episode 8 review: Scary Christmas

There is something that is always extra-unnerving when a show chooses to transform a day that should be something cheery and make it into something horrible, but that is exactly what we saw courtesy of Wednesday night’s Christmas-themed “American Horror Story: Asylum.” As a matter of fact, we feel as though we need to listen to some cheery carols and eat a gingerbread house after watching this pretty terrifying hour of television.

This was actually a rather short episode at just under 40 minutes, but what unfolded was incredibly significant when it comes to illuminating a few key points. For one, Sister Jude is truly alone in the world at the moment. Despite some “claims” from Dr. Arden that he wanted to destroy the monster that is within Sister Mary Eunice, he was instead using this solely as a ruse in order to trick her into getting her locked up and at the mercy of a deranged holiday killer who likes to murder his victims in a Santa suit. Given that she never properly nourished him during her stay at Briarcliff, he had quite a reason to go after her.

In spite of all of this terror, though, there was a slim bit of hope: Jude was able to escape alive, and she clearly has a better understanding of just how far these two people will go in order to get what they want. Meanwhile, Lana was also able to escape a surprise appearance from one Dr. Thredson inside of Briarcliff, and even locked him up temporarily in a closet with Kit’s help. The journey for these two is still far from over, but they may now finally be at a point where they can start to see the light at the end of the tunnel a little bit.

There is still quite a bit of ground that needs to be covered, though: we still don’t know how Kit and Lana will get in contact with the police, how the creatures outside of the asylum will be dealt with, or how any of this is really applicable to present day. Regardless, “American Horror Story” is succeeded in its goal of providing some good scares and quality entertainment, even if it’s not necessarily crossing over to the same elite level of TV viewing that we’ve seen from another FX show as of late in “Sons of Anarchy.”

If you want to read more about this episode, you can do so over here.

Photo: FX