Skip to content

Search Results for: american horror story

American Horror Story Roanoke (series) – Brad Falchuk & Ryan Murphy (season 6 2016/7)

IMDb.com

Reading back my reviews of previous seasons I see that I am seldom overly enthousiastic about “American Horror Story”, yet my memories usually seem more positive.

My first thought about “Roanoke” is that it is the least interesting season so far. Looking back I remember the first season as alright, of the third, fourth and fifth I have good memories.

In “Roanoke” the series live up most to the term “horror” in the title. The series sets off as a bit of a “Blair Witch” type horror with pressing atmosphere and the suggestion that what happens is real. The story is told in interviews and images and the result is pretty much horror. Then the creators start to use different styles of horror going from found footage, jumpscare to torture and a bit of zombie-like horror. Way too horror for my liking. Only here and there the black humor of the previous series found its way into the story.

And then we get a variation to the story and another one and another one until it all becomes pretty dreary.

The story is simple. A mixed couple flees the city and buy a massive house in the middle of nowhere. Of course there are (un)dead people who do not want them there. In the variations the creators show how (social) media exploits such events which is one of the few positive points about “Roanoke”.

As I said before, the different seasons have nothing incommon with the rest except for the actors. If your preference does not lay in typical horror, I would advice to skip season 6.

American Horror Story Hotel (series) – Brad Falchuk & Ryan Murphy (season 5 2015/6)

As the title suggests, season 5 plays in a hotel. This hotel is inhabited by living people, undead people and (inspite of the previous point) dead people. The undead people feed on the guests, allowing the creators to make bloody scenes with a lot of black humor. As we are used to, there are a lot of familiar actors, most of them in very different roles from previous seasons. There is a “countess” that looks like a perfect part for Jessica Lange, but this season is the first one in which Lange is not featured. I have no idea how that came to be, but the role is played by the lauded Lady Gaga. Gaga is indeed perfect for the part and she plays it exquisitely, but I wonder why she got a grammy for her part and other actors did not.

In any case, “the countess” rules a hotel omnipresent but from the background. She is a weird (looking) creature, but a very sexy one, exactly Lady Gaga. Two people man the front desc. An elderly lady and a drag queen. A policeman trying to find the “Ten Commandments Killer” finds his way to the hotel to no longer leave. “Hotel” is mostly a soap with drama and character development, but there is (of course) quite a bit of horror, also of the annoying ‘look what extreme ways of killing we can come up with’ kind.

Overall “Hotel” is a very descent series. The end is unexpectedly tame which actually adds to the previous.

American Horror Story Freak Show (series) * Brad Falchuk & Ryan Murphy (season 4 2015)

The fourth season of “American Horror Story” is of the same level as the first. Nice, but not really more than that. After the great season 2 and the good season 3, follows another ‘alright’ season. And there appear to be 9 seasons planned! I wonder if the makers keep going up and down. That would make quite an ordeal deciding if I want to see them all.

As the title suggests we follow a “freak show”, a circus of people with physical deformities. The story is mostly a drama (soap) with people making friends and arguing. Shorter and longer extra stories bring horror elements. It is indeed fun to see actors from other seasons in wholly different, or rather very comparative roles.
The main character is again played by Jessica Lange and her part is not unlike the previous series. Other actors have larger or smaller parts, but most actors return to “Freak Show” at some point. There are a few big parts played by actors that do not seem to return to the series though.

Perhaps, should you not have seen the series, it could be an idea to not just watch them in chronological order. The stories of each season has nothing to do with the other, so you could also just pick the good seasons. Not that the first and fourth season are bad or boring, but they are nothing compared the second. Season 4 does have great opening titles though.

American Horror Story Coven * Brad Falchuk & Ryan Murphy (season 3 2013)

The second season of “American Horror Story” was great, so I was curious what the third season would be like. The story this time is about a home for young witches. Jessica Lange has a part comparable to the previous season. Fitting with the ‘concept’ of the series, there are other actors from previous seasons that return, such as Evan Peters, Sarah Poulson and Frances Conroy.

Cordelia Foxx runs a school for young witches because she fears that witches will die out on current times so she wants to bring them together and train them. Her school is not big, just a few young ladies. Cordelia’s mother (Fiona, played by Lange) is “the supreme” and pretty much a despot. The whole series circle around “the next supreme”. Who will it be?
Then there are a few story lines. There is a competitive group of witches, a voodoo-group around Marie Laveau.
Laveau took revenge on Madame Delphine LaLaurie, a brutal Renaissance landlady whose character brings the topic of racism violently into the story. LaLaurie makes a wonderfully weird element to the story that allowed the creators of the series some grim humor.
The series contain brilliant and weird episodes not unlike “Asylum”, but also teeny-witchy epioses. Especially the final episode is awful.

Overall I think that this third season is fairly good, but it has too many weak episodes to be as good as season 2. It is weirder than season 1, but that season is more ‘consistent in level’. Season 3 has more highs and lows and the highs make this season more ‘watch-worthy’ than the opening season in my opinion.

American Horror Story Asylum (series) * Brad Falchuk & Ryan Murphy (season 2 2012/3)

In 2013/4 I watched the first season of “American Horror Story”. However I enjoyed that season, I did not like it enough to continue with season 2. A while ago I ran into the season 2 box in Germany for a few euros and decided to take it and put it somewhere for when I would not have a series to watch. So it happened that in the last weeks I have been watching season 2 afterall. I must say: it is great!.

I wrote about the first season that it is not so much of a horror, but a drama with horror elements. This can still be said about “Asylum”, but whereas the first season was relatively light-footed and funny, this second season is weird, dark and troubling. The way I like my TV experience!

The asylum from the title is Briarcliff, an institution for the mentally unfortunate, hard-handedly run by Sister Jude. Not all inhabitents of Briarcliff really belong there. Sister Jude herself admits people who she think need treatment. Other people are sent to Briarcliff by the state or by a judge. The inhabitents make a motley crew of the insane, criminals and victims of the system. After a while under the ‘care’ of Sister Jude, everybody becomes a drooling nutcase.

Working in a wing of the institution is Dr. Arden, a cruel doctor using patients as test-subjects. His relation with Sister Jude is not one of mutual respect. This element makes an easy bridge for typical horror elements.

The series could be seen as a soap in a few ways. Several of the characters develop as the 13 episodes pass by. Sometimes the changes are sudden and extraordinary sharp. At other times the changes are more subtle. It is obvious that the story has again been well thought through and the season contains horror, fright, disgust, but also well placed drama and has lost almost all of the light-footedness and humour of the first season. I did not see a whole lot of ‘deeper meanings’ (except criticism on the system of mental health and on the Church), so I am not going to use David Lynch as a comparison, but maybe I can recommend this season to people who like David Cronenberg’s older films for example.

I certainly like “Asylum”, so the next season could well raise a few places on my wishlist.

American Horror Story (series) * Brad Falchuk & Ryan Murphy (season 1 2011)

“American Horror Story” is not a horror show with zombies and vampires. Rather it is a drama series with (quite a lot of) horror elements. The show can be quite bloody, but seldom really scary. A family with a troubled past moves into a massive 18th century house where all previous inhabitents who died there, also still live. Quite a couple of plots and storylines are served to the watcher, a handfull of developing characters and a lot of suspense. The episodes start in the past where something gruesome happened and then returns to the present to make the link with the present day.

The series are quite well written, the atmosphere is descent and the humour alright. Yet, like with most series that I see, I did not find the first series interesting enough to continue to the second. As of now, there are four series and I think the show is still running.

Time will tell if I will ever see more of this quite uncommon show.

Ratched – Murphy & Romansky (series 2020)

  • drama

Sarah Paulson (whom I mostly know for “American Horror Story“, just as Rian Murphy, one of the creators of the series) is Mildred Ratched (and she produced 11 of the 18 episodes). Ratched is based on the character with the same name from the film “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest”). Ratched is a manipulative woman who works herself into the staff of an exclusive early mental institution where Dr. Richard Hanover experiments with innovative techniques, mostly from Switzerland, with varying degrees of succes.

The series begin bloody with Edward Tolleson (Finn Wittrock who also plays in “American Horror Story”) killing several priests. The series do not become as bloody anymore after that. Tolleson is taken to the hospital of Hanover, initially for treatment, but also for investigation and -later on- to be prepared for death penalty as he becomes the focal point of a governor’s campaign. It is soon obvious that Tolleson is the reason that Ratched came to work at the facility.

Ratched tries to manipulate everybody around here to reach her objective which is initially unknown to the viewer. However meticulously planned, things do not go exactly as Ratched hoped. Especially with the arrival of Gwendolyn Briggs (Cynthia Nixon from “Sex and the City”), Ratched has to look deep into her inner and learn that there is more to life than a childhood’s promise.

The story nicely twists and turns, the series have some amusing characters such as Louise (Amanda Plummer from “Pulp Fiction”), Betsy Bucket (Judy Davis) whose character evolves wonderfully and Lenore Osgood (Sharon Stone). It goes from drama to thriller to ‘whodunnit’ with a bit of a horror element here and there.

Bird Box – Susanne Bier (2018)

Sandra Bullock and droopy face Sarah Paulson (who plays in all “American Horror Story” seasons) in an apocalyptic action film. Would that be something? It’s also a Netflix original…

Some sort of creatures roam the earth. When you see one, you become suicidal. A few people have figured that out before it was too late and they end up on a house together. This goes alright for a while, but slowly but surely the number of people goes down. A message was received from other survivors who live downstream a river, so when all else fails, Bullock and two children make the hazardous journey.

“Bird Box” does not have a great story, but it is somewhat original and not too badly executed. What the film does do well, is set a tense atmosphere. There are some star actors here too, some well thought of details and the acting is pretty good, especially that of the children.

The film is alright. If you feel like watching a pressing ‘no-splatter-horror’ sometimes, this could be an option.

Hannibal (series, season 1) * Bryan Fuller (2013)

And again we have a highly acclaimed series (8.6 on IMDb) of which the first season did not convince me enough to want to watch the second, but people keep saying it gets better. Why would the creator of a series make an unconvincing first season only to improve afterwards? Just as with “Breaking Bad“, “Vikings“, “Dexter” or “Lost” the first season of “Hannibal” may not be bad or boring, but not interesting enough to interest me to continue with season two. Of the earlier mentioned series I sometimes did watch another season later on, but still did not like the series. The only exception to the ‘rule’ is “American Horror Story“. The first season was only so-so, but the second and third are great. The next series to watch will be season four.Read More »Hannibal (series, season 1) * Bryan Fuller (2013)

It – Andy Muschietti (2017)

  • horror

I suppose I saw the original “Stephen King’s It” (1990) as it was quite a thing back in the say. But I do not even remember that this appears to have been a mini series. In any case, this remake is also already 7 years old. It was not high on my list.

Muschietti’s version has strong “Stranger Things” (2016-8) vibes. A group of young outsiders team up to fight a supernatural evil. The presence of Finn Wolfhard adds to the similarity.

I suppose you will know the story. A rural American village is terrorized by the clown Pennywise. Children disappear, but it are also children who set out to fight it.

Just a horror. “Stranger Things” is way better, both in the 1980’ies atmosphere and storywise.