2 out of 5

Written after season 1

Director: Various

Two stars isn’t exactly fair: American Horror Story does end up being interesting at spots, and spooky here and there, and does stray into some fun weird territory. It’s also sloppy, and short attention span theater, and aims for more sophistication than it ends up fulfilling. With and without spoiling anything: the show is about a family moving into a haunted house. The family has a lot of problems, so does this house. The full illustration of the extent of each’s problems is shown during the course of the season. But from episode one you will be introduced to several of the problems that, for me, ended up plaguing most episodes: in the first few minutes we are (through quick cuts) shown an affair, and a woman discovering the affair, and jilted attacking the jiltee with a knife due to this affair. This is Mr. and Mrs. Harmon, our husband and wife leads. The affair leads into the opening credits (the best part of the show by far), but there hasn’t really been any reason to watch so far. We don’t know anything about this couple, and the presentation and response isn’t strange or interesting or crazy enough to merit much attention beyond the norm. But we keep watching because the trailers have promised some creepy stuff. And creepy stuff does, indeed, happen. But as plot thread upon plot thread stacks up, while each piece is individually interesting, and there’s a nice creepy production to the whole affair, nothing really feels full fledged or grabbing, instead we are waiting for… something. Something that sort of comes by season’s end, but in a disappointingly “that’s it?” kind of fashion. It’s hard to make horror series, I get that. But making a compelling series is a must before the horror, and American Horror Story just doesn’t get there. If you have a couple days, watch it in one sitting, there are spots of interest here and there. But if you were watching week to week, are you really returning for season 2?

UPDATE:

Post season 2 the spirit of what I said above remains the same.  However, conceptually, I think the show is really sound – using a recurring cast as different characters in different settings to achieve thematically similar results.  Season 2 was horrific where season 1 was ‘erotic’, but they shared the same ADD feel.  Now the answer is that I will return for season 3, but it’s a hard show to recommend, even if it is interesting to watch.