American Horror Stories: Full season

September 26, 2021 7:30 AM - Season 1 (Full Season)

Released without publicity to Hulu, is this aggravatingly-titled spinoff an intriguing experiment in short-form anthology storytelling, or a dollar store knockoff of American Horror Story? Yes.

It's hard to gauge the level of interest for a show that has gone so unheralded that I doubt even many American Horror Story fans know that it exists. But I watched it, and by God, I'm sure someone else did, too.

posted by kittens for breakfast (3 comments total)

Let's break it down.

Episodes 1 and 2, "Rubber(Wo)Man, Parts 1 and 2":

A preposterously beautiful 25-year-old woman plays a high school student who moves into the Murder House of AHS Seasons 1 and 8, where she quickly finds Tate's old costume and adopts his modus operandi. AHStories generally features a younger cast than the main show -- at times it feels more like AHS: CW -- and frankly, most of those young actors are terrible. Sierra McCormick is extremely good, and plays well against AHS vet Matt Bomer (see also Doom Patrol) as one of her two dads; the other dad is also on screen. Anyway, the first half of this is a little slow to get going, but the second cooks, and it all ends with a nice coda that requires no further elaboration, but gets it nevertheless.

Episode 3, "Drive-in":

A pair of bad teen actors (not the worst ones on this show!) see a revival of a lost horror movie that supposedly turns any audience into psychotic thrill killers. This is exactly what happens, and the results are surprisingly graphic. Adrienne Barbeau is wasted on this, as is John Carroll Lynch, both giving their all in thankless bit parts. Early on, Sarah Paulson appears in flashback as Tipper Gore (!!!), as if to tease us by showing us what this episode could have been, but chose to be this instead, because American Horror Stories hates you.

Episode 4, "The Naughty List":

I fastforwarded through this episode. The characters begin to get brutally massacred at 24:27. You're welcome.

Episode 5, "Ba'al":

Convoluted yet obvious, this is largely for Billie Lourd fans. She's great. Let's move on.

Episode 6, "Feral":

Just when you thought it was safe to watch literally anything else, "Feral" sneaks up and is fucking good. If you only watch one episode of American Horror Stories, and I wouldn't totally not recommend that, this must be the one.

Episode 7, "Game Over":

Return to Murder House YET AGAIN. Hey -- Dylan McDermott is there! So that's cool. Sierra McCormick is also back, and that's fine by me. This episode throws all the tics and twitches of an entire season of AHS into 45 minutes, leaving me with the same weird mix of satisfaction, disappointment and confusion that we all know so well by the ending. I can't imagine there will be a second season, and I am completely okay with that. Watch "Feral!" Peace.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 8:02 AM on September 26, 2021 [4 favorites]

Tough crowd, kittens for breakfast. I binged it, and liked most of them. Especially Feral, but also the delightful camp of Drive In and the ridiculous premise of Naughty List (Danny Trejo, killer Santa!) The three Murder House episodes were re-mixes of other AHS plot elements; not awful by themselves, but the other new stories were more fun.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 7:23 PM on September 29, 2021

I was really disappointed on how reliant they were on Murder House. I wasn't a huge fan of that seasons and certainly am annoyed how often they come back to it. To me this series should be about telling other shorter stories not rehashing old story lines....again...Drive In rehashes a story line that often shows up in horror. If you want something like this, I prefer Cigarette Burns from Masters of Horror (John Carpenter). It's been done before and better. I dropped out before Feral as a result. I'll try to watch it, but over all this was really disappointing and I hope it doesn't get another season.
posted by miss-lapin at 3:56 PM on October 9, 2021