A Quick Review of "American Horror Story"

 

The first thing I want to get down here is that “American Horror Story” is a really good show. Normally, a statement like that would be followed with “...and you should watch it,” but not this time. Why not? Because, and this is coming from a staunch opponent of all kinds of censorship, this show is not for everyone. It's certainly not for children.

“Duh,” you say, “it's in the 'horror' genre. It's meant to be scary, and disturbing. So it's not for kids.”

Congratulations, parent-of-the-year, but I'm not buying it. Take a horror movie like the first installment to the “Nightmare on Elm Street” series, broadly considered a classic of the genre. Watch it as an adult, and it's not scary. It's silly. The point of that movie isn't to scare adults—all the main characters are kids.

Or take the film adaptation to Stephen King's IT. I wasn't allowed to watch movies like that as a kid, but many, many of my peers were, and the result of it imprinting our generation single-handedly decimated the birthday party clown industry. Probably.

And sure, it was a movie about adults, but they were adults re-living a trauma from their childhoods, the trauma that reunited them and brought them back to their hometown to face a demon that hunted children.

Essentially what I'm arguing is that many of these scary movies, despite their ratings, are made to frighten children. “Well, that's obvious, isn't it?” you're no doubt thinking, “Adults are steadier, with a firmer grasp on reality. You can't really scare them, not in this day and age.”

(Or you might be saying, “Your hypothetical audience responses are already contradicting each other!” To which I say, shut up. NC-17 ratings aside, everyone knows that teenagers are the most powerful target demographic in the nation, and even movies that claim not to be for kids are secretly doing everything they can to appeal to those kids, a la Joe Camel)

Enter “American Horror Story,” which is not for kids. I can't say that enough.

The show has started its second season with new characters and a new location, giving some of the notable actors from the first season a chance inhabit new roles. What both seasons and (hopefully) future seasons retain in common is a sprawling nature, telling snippets of various stories centered around the location drawn from different points in history. With this, it can echo and pay homage to classic horror films or period pieces even as it creates an aura of timelessness about the horror, a sense of persistence that evil possesses that leaves it haunting foul places long after every inhabitant has died.

But it is not just haunted houses (or asylums).

The main thing I like about this show is that it is a conglomeration of many horror movie universes. See, each work of fiction creates its own sort of universe that operates on its own sort of rules: in many movie universes, ghosts are real. In some, those ghosts have certain kinds of powers. In other movie universes, corpses can be reanimated, either as zombies or in the fashion of Frankenstein's monster. In some movie universes, the devil is real, and desires to possess human flesh. In others, aliens study us and wait to make a move for conquest.

In the “American Horror Story” universe, all of these tropes are on the table, all of these conventions can come into play, and even interact with each other.

So, in a single story arc, nearly every kind of movie monster available can make an appearance, which sounds great to the kids who loved “Freddy vs. Jason” style crossover stories.

But there's another kind of movie monster, one that is featured on “American Horror Story” far more often than any other kind. It is not a supernatural monster, not a freak result of twisted scientific experiments, not a lingering spirit of terror avenging some atrocity from its spent life, not an extraterrestrial being of unfathomable intellect. The monster we are shown most frequently in this show is simple, unabashed humanity.

Jason Voorhees could never happen. “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” could never happen. Despite what many Internet memesters are apparently hoping, “Night of the Living Dead” could (probably?) never happen. But the acts committed by regular characters on “American Horror Story?” They could happen, and we know this because they have happened, do happen, and will happen. A passing knowledge of the news and human nature is enough to affirm that.

So there is a fundamental parallel between the victims in “American Horror Story” and the horrific monsters that they face, and a stark realism to the show that exists alongside its more fantastical nature, lightening the burden of suspending disbelief. We know that ghosts don't exist (don't we?), but we also know that people, real people, can be capable of terrifying things, and this is a reality that “American Horror Story” makes plainer than any other.

And that's not for kids. Sorry. I'm okay with them thinking ghosts are real or that clowns are actually terrifying spider-demons in disguise, because those are fantastical, flighty, silly notions.

But the fact that monsters are very real and they look and act just like anyone else? As an adult, I'm barely ready to accept that, so don't inflict it on your kids.

That being said, “American Horror Story” is a really good show...and you should watch it (if you're grown up and are absolutely into that kind of thing).