Critic Reviews for American Horror Story (2011)

75

Richard LarsonOct 9, 2013

Season 3 Review: American Horror Story has always been a series that loves its characters and still isn't afraid to put them through hell, and it seems like there are more layers down there than expected. Read full review

70

Ellen GrayOct 9, 2013

Season 3 Review: There are aspects of Coven that are stylish and clever, and others that are just "Carrie" on steroids. The cast, of course, is tremendous. Read full review

60

Hank StueverOct 9, 2013

Season 3 Review: Coven is the first time American Horror Story gets started with the unmistakable feeling of timecards being punched, as an ensemble of big-name stars dutifully carry forward the show’s trademark fixation on style over substance. Read full review

80

Mary McNamaraOct 9, 2013

Season 3 Review: There's still blood and gore all over the floor, mind you. Not to mention rape, gruesome torture and evil run riot, and that's just the first episode. But there's also a lightness of touch and tone, a backlight of sly humor and, more important, a clearly delineated narrative. Read full review

70

San Jose Mercury News/Contra Costa Times

Chuck BarneyOct 9, 2013

Season 3 Review: Every AHS series has now featured at least one [rape scene]. Isn't it time to move on? At least he and his collaborators, as usual, do their best to soften the blows with healthy doses of camp and humor. Read full review

70

James PoniewozikOct 9, 2013

Season 3 Review: I’m less sure what the season will do with the potentially volatile racial themes the premiere hints at. But AHS seasons have always thrived on the philosophy of risk and excess. So far, the first episode of Coven is a stylish introduction (complete with black hats). Read full review

40

TV Guide MagazineMatt RoushOct 9, 2013

Season 3 Review: Unfortunately, too much of the focus is on novice witch Zoe, played by Taissa Farmiga with the same one-note boringly sulky attitude she exhibited as the brat you couldn't wait to see die in the first season. Read full review

75

Mark A. PerigardOct 9, 2013

Season 3 Review: There may be fewer jump scares, but this could turn out to be the best Horror Story. Read full review

80

HollywoodChicago.comBrian TallericoOct 9, 2013

Season 3 Review: There are a LOT of characters and one hopes that Murphy & Falchuk don’t allow the program to get weighed down in subplots. Even if the show does get scattered, great performances by Lange, Bates, Bassett, Roberts, and Farmiga should keep viewers from wanting to leave this Coven. Read full review

80

Neil GenzlingerOct 9, 2013

Season 3 Review: We’ve come to expect an eclectic mix from the American Horror Story anthology, and the formula works particularly well in this installment, thanks to uninhibited work by the big-name cast. Read full review

75

David WiegandOct 8, 2013

Season 3 Review: American Horror Story: Coven ramps the silliness up an enjoyable notch with a story set in a New Orleans school for young witches. Read full review

70

Allison KeeneOct 8, 2013

Season 3 Review: Fish-eye lenses and rotating cameras don't feel at home here as in other installments, and things aren't creepy so much as grotesque. Still, there are a number of decent effects and a healthy dose of humor that keep things moving along in an entertaining way. Eventually, the many stories find their way together, which helps propel the premiere to its promising finish. Read full review

75

Verne GayOct 8, 2013

Season 3 Review: Filmed in New Orleans, Coven wants to soak up some atmosphere, bowdlerize some local history and otherwise creep out viewers. At least on these three points, this season should easily score. Read full review

75

Lori RacklOct 8, 2013

Season 3 Review: The storyline is more tightly focused than last year’s see-what-sticks approach. But it also feels like it’s pandering a bit to a younger CW crowd. Read full review

75

Robert RorkeOct 8, 2013

Season 3 Review: [Lange and Bates] are the only reason to watch. Read full review

70

Rob OwenOct 8, 2013

Season 3 Review: It’s always hard to tell how any series will go, especially one as reliably twisty and turny as American Horror Story, but in its first hour at least, Coven offers a clear, entertaining set-up for a potentially strong season. Read full review

88

Curt WagnerOct 8, 2013

Season 3 Review: Although the premiere is hampered by unnecessary narration and over-exposition, it's still a bewitching brew of whimsy, psychological scares, horrific atrocities and the wonderfully relentless feeling that something wicked this way comes. Read full review

75

Erik AdamsOct 8, 2013

Season 3 Review: Sometimes you just have to go with American Horror Story, even if it hurts your soul to be entertained by such heedless provocation. Read full review

30

Brian LowryOct 7, 2013

Season 3 Review: As with all three incarnations of AHS, there are some beautiful images (courtesy of director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon and cinematographer Michael Goi), and Murphy and Falchuk’s script exhibits a knowing familiarity with the genre. Still, there’s always something unsavory about using the supernatural as a shield to indulge in sex-laced sadism, which has become a common and frankly rather tired aspect of the whole latex-clad-gimp streak running through the series. Read full review

75

Ken TuckerNov 1, 2012

Season 2 Review: Does it add up to a coherent whole? Impossible to say so far. Asylum is, in its opening episodes, more energetic and impishly funny than its predecessor. Read full review

63

Tom GliattoOct 25, 2012

Season 2 Review: It's dark, big-top sadism, and we wait for a story to emerge. [5 Nov 2012, p.41]

75

Gail PenningtonOct 17, 2012

Season 2 Review: Like a good scare? How about a bad scare? Or a thousand scares, good and bad and crazy? Season 2 of "American Horror Story," subtitled Asylum, is for you. Read full review

70

Troy PattersonOct 17, 2012

Season 2 Review: Less scary than freaky, it's deliberately unhinged-light horror about low camp, a showcase for scenery chewing and giddy blasphemy, an exploitation chamber piece. Read full review

70

Matt Zoller SeitzOct 17, 2012

Season 2 Review: This is still a cheeky, trashy, nasty series, one that'll do or show pretty much anything if it thinks it'll get a rise out of you. But its sense of itself has become more refined. Read full review

80

Willa PaskinOct 17, 2012

Season 2 Review: Asylum dives right in on racism, homophobia and sexism, and wrings something emotional out of them. Read full review

80

James PoniewozikOct 17, 2012

Season 2 Review: So far it works.... Asylum feels like a more focused, if equally frenetic, screamfest. It's also gorgeously realized. Read full review

80

TV Guide MagazineMatt RoushOct 17, 2012

Season 2 Review: Asylum delivers a much more evocative nightmare gallery without losing any of the franchise's provocative, look-ma-I'm-screaming bravado. Read full review

70

Ellen GrayOct 17, 2012

Season 2 Review: Not everyone's going to like this or other aspects of Sister Jude's story, which essentially does for nuns what the first season did for real estate agents. But it's the kind of cliché meant to appeal to parochial-school survivors of a certain age of which, yes, I'm one. And Murphy another. Read full review

40

Brian LowryOct 17, 2012

Season 2 Review: The series remains a collection of moments (creepy, campy, revolting) and stock characters, designed more to provoke and earn the "TV-MA" rating than to interact. Read full review

60

Chris ConatonOct 17, 2012

Season 2 Review: American Horror Story: Asylum reintroduces the first season's nightmarish craziness but also sets it within a coherent basic history. It helps too that the new cast appears to be so tight. Read full review

75

Curt WagnerOct 17, 2012

Season 2 Review: It's truly troubling to watch as helpless, restrained patients are treated against their wills. Yet despite mumbling over and over during the first episode, "I'm done with this already," I had to see the second. Read full review

75

Mark A. PerigardOct 17, 2012

Season 2 Review: The first episode teases an exciting dynamic, with the possibility of forcing viewers to root for one monster over another. Read full review

42

Alan SepinwallOct 17, 2012

Season 2 Review: Ultimately, it's the exact same tedious show they've been making, under one name or another, for years now. Read full review

38

Linda StasiOct 17, 2012

Season 2 Review: If Freddy Krueger married Regan from "The Exorcist," and they moved to "Shutter Island" with "Agnes of God" on "Friday the 13th," they'd all end up in this Asylum. Read full review

40

Mike HaleOct 16, 2012

Season 2 Review: The bad news is that this potentially rich stew of frights and kink has been underspiced: Asylum, so far, doesn't have the energy or the over-the-top inventiveness that Season 1 eventually displayed. Read full review

80

Jen ChaneyOct 16, 2012

Season 2 Review: This new Horror Story is nearly as depraved, unapologetically over the top and engrossing as the first season was. Read full review

80

Maureen RyanOct 16, 2012

Season 2 Review: It's to the credit of Asylum's writers, directors and cast that the emotional pain of the characters often feels as real as their uncertainty and terror. Read full review

75

David WiegandOct 16, 2012

Season 2 Review: Occasional PSA breaks aside, Asylum is all in great and occasionally gory fun, and the cast members deliver the over-the-top dialogue with a heaping topping of relish. Read full review

25

Uncle BarkyEd BarkOct 16, 2012

Season 2 Review: Some of its imagery is arresting. But this is mostly a sorry, unfortunate and even contemptuous enterprise. Read full review

75

Zeba BlayOct 16, 2012

Season 2 Review: The most interesting thing here is the show's willingness to take risks: killing off major characters, running about 18 different plot lines at once, incorporating racy psycho-sexual and religious undertones, asking more questions than it intends to answer. Read full review

50

Verne GayOct 16, 2012

Season 2 Review: Asylum has some good special effects, just not much of a story to hang them on. Read full review

80

Rob OwenOct 15, 2012

Season 2 Review: In its first two episodes, AHS returns as a creepy, spooky jolt of unpredictable storytelling. Read full review

80

Emily NussbaumDec 8, 2011

Season 1 Review: The show may be ridiculous, but the humiliation and panic feel real. And there's something to be said for surprise. Read full review

50

Matthew GilbertOct 5, 2011

Season 1 Review: American Horror Story, from Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk of "Glee" and "Nip/Tuck," is a very standard creep-fest, an aggressively stylized mash-up of familiar haunted-house movies including "The Amityville Horror," "The Haunting," and "The Shining." Read full review

91

Mark A. PerigardOct 5, 2011

Season 1 Review: I loved the pilot, mostly because I could never predict where the story was going, a rarity in prime-time TV. Read full review

60

Mary McNamaraOct 5, 2011

Season 1 Review: American Horror Story is a big ol' brooding, baffling, ridiculous and occasionally compelling mess of a show. Read full review

90

Glenn GarvinOct 5, 2011

Season 1 Review: Repellent and fascinating, a stygian nightmare awash in sick lusts, it seems certain to attract large audiences and huge controversy. Read full review

60

David HinckleyOct 5, 2011

Season 1 Review: Viewers who like the horror genre and the offbeat Murphy/Falchuk approach, and who are willing to put in enough serious time to absorb all the nuances, will fall in love. Read full review

50

Linda StasiOct 5, 2011

Season 1 Review: The scariest thing about American Horror Story, the highly anticipated FX series from the guys who brought you "Glee" and "Nip/Tuck," is that almost everything in the entire show has been cribbed (or crypt-ed, in this case) from every other American horror story. Read full review

75

Verne GayOct 5, 2011

Season 1 Review: Amusing to watch, but not particularly scary. "Creepy" seems the better word. Read full review

30

Ellen GrayOct 5, 2011

Season 1 Review: As the one character who grounds a story that would otherwise seem like a random collection of bad things happening to so-so people, Britton's the only reason I could imagine watching American Horror Story past the three episodes I've seen. Read full review

60

Daynah BurnettOct 5, 2011

Season 1 Review: So much of the outright horror is recycled from films-The Shining, Don't Look Now, Poltergeist-but the plotting and pacing feel vaguely original, sometimes complicated and sometimes satirical, like American Beauty. Read full review

50

Curt WagnerOct 5, 2011

Season 1 Review: It's fun to look at, but there's not a lot of substance underneath. Read full review

70

Troy PattersonOct 5, 2011

Season 1 Review: So far, American Horror Story isn't the great American horror story but rather a pretty good fright night. Read full review

70

James PoniewozikOct 5, 2011

Season 1 Review: It's a big download of fever-dream melodrama, but strong casting goes a long way toward selling it. Read full review

60

TV Guide MagazineMatt RoushOct 5, 2011

Season 1 Review: The hot mess of American Horror Story is berserk to a fault, though it does have an unnerving originality compelling us to watch while we cringe, or perhaps smirk. Read full review

75

Uncle BarkyEd BarkOct 5, 2011

Season 1 Review: It's a lot to process, and at times too much to take. Still, Horror Story often is a wonder. Read full review

70

Zap2it (Inside the Box)Andrea ReiherOct 5, 2011

Season 1 Review: If horror is your thing, you should definitely check it out for a few episodes and decide for yourself. Read full review

50

Robert BiancoOct 4, 2011

Season 1 Review: As with so many stories that are held at a constant rolling boil, the excess quickly becomes funny rather than frightening. Read full review

10

Maureen RyanOct 4, 2011

Season 1 Review: It doesn't work as a character drama and it's tiresome more often than it's freakily scary. Read full review

75

David WiegandOct 4, 2011

Season 1 Review: Even if it isn't the scariest series ever, Horror Story still has tasty performances by several characters, chief among them Lange and Conroy. Read full review

80

Jonathan StormOct 4, 2011

Season 1 Review: American Horror Story may not rank that high on a TV list, but fans of this kind of thing will want to chop themselves in half, strangle in a bathtub, and slit their throats--just to name a few of the things that happen in the first two episodes--if they miss it. Read full review

16

Alan SepinwallOct 4, 2011

Season 1 Review: It has pretensions of depth and ambition, but really all it's about is whatever cool thing Murphy and Falchuk wanted to do next, hurled at the screen with such reckless abandon that none of it works. Read full review

63

Phillip MaciakOct 4, 2011

Season 1 Review: As stunning, seamless, and well-curated as this particular mixtape is, the viewer is haunted by the constant anxiety that, in the end, there's nothing holding it all together other than good taste. Read full review

40

Mike HaleOct 4, 2011

Season 1 Review: American Horror Story has the potential to be a lot of fun, if that style and cleverness can be eventually coupled with characters we care about and a narrative that feels less like a haunted house sampler, stitched with threads of Stephen King, Hammer Films and Lars von Trier's TV series "The Kingdom." Read full review

50

Rob OwenOct 3, 2011

Season 1 Review: You may not come away knowing whether you like it, but you won't be bored. Read full review

60

Brian LowryOct 3, 2011

Season 1 Review: AHS derives inspiration from so many horror films there's some fun in simply identifying those moments. But there's also a surreal quality that feels wildly overdone--and periodically risks tumbling from inspiring fright into inducing giggles. Read full review

88

Chuck BarneySep 30, 2011

Season 1 Review: Most TV shows, after all, quickly fade from memory. This one will haunt your dreams. Read full review

40

Tim GoodmanSep 30, 2011

Season 1 Review: It's hard to tell whether Murphy and Falchuk are real fans of the horror genre or just set out to create something so creepy and freaky and off-the-charts weird that it would create massive buzz. Read full review

88

Tom GliattoSep 30, 2011

Season 1 Review: It's funny and moves blindingly fast, barely giving you time to blink or gulp--Dark Shadows for the PlayStation age. [10 Oct 2011, p.39]

83

Ken TuckerSep 29, 2011

Season 1 Review: AHS is pretty much all scare, all the time: a whole lotta screams, sex, jolts, mashed faces, psychotic behavior, and dead babies. Read full review

83

Hank StueverSep 21, 2011

Season 1 Review: Overdoing things is one of Murphy's trademark flaws, but this show has a captivating style and giddy gross-outs. Read full review