American Horror Stories – Season 1 Review

An anthology series of stand-alone episodes delving into horror myths, legends, and lore, serving as a spin-off of Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk‘s long-running American Horror Story.

Horror is not really a genre that’s supposed to be comforting and warming. There are, of course, some exceptions to that rule such as Ruben Fleischer‘s Zombieland and my personal favorite movie of last year, Christopher Landon‘s Freaky, but those are two movies that were supposed to be comforting. They managed to flawlessly inject comedy, heart, and horror into one film and the results were excellent.

But more often than not, horror is supposed to make you feel uncomfortable and on-edge. Its intent is to make you feel disturbed and take you on an unrelenting journey of tension and fear, and sometimes even a psychological journey that toys with your brain.

Ever since about season four of American Horror Story, titled Freak Show, I have regularly tuned in each and every season to see what twisted things Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk would come up with. The first four seasons of AHS to me are magnificent. Murder House was a creepy story of ghosts and a haunted house but still managed to feel so grounded in reality for the most part.

Asylum was probably the most unsettling to date, Coven was a welcome mix-up and Freak Show is my personal favorite due to the setting and the absolutely chilling character of Twisty the Clown. Nowadays, I’m not as big a fan because of how it essentially turned into a campy erotic thriller, but even still, the potential is there.

That’s why when a spinoff, American Horror Stories, was announced, I was incredibly eager to see what it would entail. Each episode is its own self-contained story with its own set of characters, similar to an episode of the hit show The Twilight Zone, as compared to American Horror Story, which has one full season of one continuous storyline.

Having each episode tell its own story, the possibilities for greatless were right there in front of us, and yet American Horror Stories is genuinely awful. Not only is it a gigantic missed opportunity, but it’s the worst piece of entertainment the American Horror Story franchise has given us to date.

The first episode, which was split into two parts, called Rubber (wo)Man was actually a surprisingly great start to the new series and got me eager to see what would come next. The episode features Sierra McCormick as a teenage girl named Scarlett who lives with her two dads, who move into the infamous Murder House from the first season.

Of course, when they finally unpack their bags and settle in, things start to get incredibly strange. Scarlett starts to notice a mysterious individual dressed in a leather outfit walking around the house. One night, she notices the suit in her closet and feels strangely drawn to wear the costume, and when she does, she becomes a completely different person.

This two-part episode is not only uncomfortable to watch but also proves that Murphy and Falchuk have some great ideas and can be inspired. The keyword there is can, because episode three, titled Drive-In, was the first sign that this spin-off was going downhill and fast.

A couple of friends hear about a cult film called Rabbit Rabbit, directed by a man named Larry Bitterman (John Carroll Lynch), and is said to put an unbreakable curse on anybody that watches it. These friends are told that there’s going to be a special screening of the film at their local drive-in theatre and, being dumb kids in a piece of horror entertainment, what do they do? Of course, they don’t heed the warnings and they go to see the film anyway.

It doesn’t take long for things to get ugly. The problem with this episode is that it’s just simply not scary and is laughably predictable. You know exactly what’s going to happen the whole time and by the time the end credits appear, you’ll feel completely empty inside. And it doesn’t help matters when the acting in the episode is atrocious and the dialogue comes across as Nickelodeon movie dialogue.

From there we move onto The Naughty List which is the worst episode of any AHS property to date. I initially watched this episode on its original air date, July 29, and now, almost a month later, I still cannot believe that this episode was approved. The writing is horrifically bad and features some of the worst dialogue I’ve heard in years.

Not only that, but the entire episode essentially revolves around a group of social-media addicted teenagers who run a group on YouTube called “The Bro House”. I’m sure this episode was trying to parody the dumb YouTube channels out there that do the same sort of thing, but in trying to poke fun at these channels, they inadvertently made an episode that’s more annoying than having to actually watch those channels.

The only thing the episode had going for it was having Danny Trejo as a murderous Santa Claus and even that was wasted seeing as how he was only in the episode for a few minutes at the most. Following that episode is BA’AL which was decent enough although it definitely felt as though it was lacking that shock factor that the first few seasons of AHS delivered so expertly.

Feral is, thankfully, a great episode that follows a married couple whose son tragically went missing many years ago. The couple goes out to a massive forest tourist attraction for a small camping trip only to find out that they are not alone. It surprisingly manages to subvert a lot of tropes and has an ending that’s so vicious and brutal that it made me wish the whole season had smart writing like that episode contained.

The final episode of the season, Game Over, confused me like crazy when I was watching it because of how meta it was. The characters in the episode mention American Horror Story – seriously. During the first few minutes of the episode, a couple is pulling up to the Murder House and begin to take pictures of themselves in front of it, talking about how cool it is they’re in front of the Murder House from their favorite show, AHS.

It made me stop and think “Wait a second… do you mean to tell me that American Horror Stories takes place in a world where American Horror Story is a fictional show like in our world?” but then it’s revealed not much later on that the whole episode is essentially a video game that a woman is creating. It’s a brilliant twist and is definitely one of the best episodes of the series.

And really, as a whole, the series is technically great. The camera work is wonderful, the editing is quite strong and I loved how each episode had its own distinct opening title sequence unique to that episode’s storyline, but at the end of the day, I was majorly disappointed with American Horror Stories. It features truly atrocious writing, bad directing, and often feels uninspired. It has a few great episodes but the majority are huge misses. This season proves that some stories are better left untold.