I have long believed that you can judge a book by its cover, and that you absolutely should. But on occasion, nature conspires to prove me wrong, and American Horror Story is one of those shows. Drawn in by the fancy DVD box art consisting of a flying gimp and some lovely fonts, I gave the show a try, and found it utterly unlike the impressions the cover had created.
My first mistake was to assume this would be a horror series. Sure, it's in the title, but for the most part, this is a fairly banal family drama with some horror tropes and movie references thrown in. It starts okay, at least by horror standards; a horrendously boring, white middle-class family moves into a creepy house, just like they should, but rather than set up a creepy, malevolent atmosphere in which ghastlies interrupt the yuppy's happy home making, the show is utterly preoccupied with watching these people bicker. The dad had an affair, the mother had a miscarriage, the daughter is a teenager. Most character interactions involve re-iterating those facts in the loudest and most hammy ways imaginable. There are ghosts, but they are not the ethereal, mysterious kind, they are fleshy twerps who mope around the house like something out of Beetle Juice , only in this case, they are funny by accident.
All in all, it's a big disappointment. Though the font is still lovely.
Never horrifying, sometimes horrible
I have long believed that you can judge a book by its cover, and that you absolutely should. But on occasion, nature conspires to prove me wrong, and American Horror Story is one of those shows. Drawn in by the fancy DVD box art consisting of a flying gimp and some lovely fonts, I gave the show a try, and found it utterly unlike the impressions the cover had created.
My first mistake was to assume this would be a horror series. Sure, it's in the title, but for the most part, this is a fairly banal family drama with some horror tropes and movie references thrown in. It starts okay, at least by horror standards; a horrendously boring, white middle-class family moves into a creepy house, just like they should, but rather than set up a creepy, malevolent atmosphere in which ghastlies interrupt the yuppy's happy home making, the show is utterly preoccupied with watching these people bicker. The dad had an affair, the mother had a miscarriage, the daughter is a teenager. Most character interactions involve re-iterating those facts in the loudest and most hammy ways imaginable. There are ghosts, but they are not the ethereal, mysterious kind, they are fleshy twerps who mope around the house like something out of Beetle Juice , only in this case, they are funny by accident.
All in all, it's a big disappointment. Though the font is still lovely.