- Network: FX
- Series Premiere Date: Oct 5, 2011
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Critic Reviews
- Critic score
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The show may be ridiculous, but the humiliation and panic feel real. And there's something to be said for surprise.
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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."
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I loved the pilot, mostly because I could never predict where the story was going, a rarity in prime-time TV.
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American Horror Story is a big ol' brooding, baffling, ridiculous and occasionally compelling mess of a show.
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Repellent and fascinating, a stygian nightmare awash in sick lusts, it seems certain to attract large audiences and huge controversy.
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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.
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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.
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Amusing to watch, but not particularly scary. "Creepy" seems the better word.
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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.
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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.
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It's fun to look at, but there's not a lot of substance underneath.
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So far, American Horror Story isn't the great American horror story but rather a pretty good fright night.
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It's a big download of fever-dream melodrama, but strong casting goes a long way toward selling it.
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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.
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It's a lot to process, and at times too much to take. Still, Horror Story often is a wonder.
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If horror is your thing, you should definitely check it out for a few episodes and decide for yourself.
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As with so many stories that are held at a constant rolling boil, the excess quickly becomes funny rather than frightening.
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It doesn't work as a character drama and it's tiresome more often than it's freakily scary.
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Even if it isn't the scariest series ever, Horror Story still has tasty performances by several characters, chief among them Lange and Conroy.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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."
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You may not come away knowing whether you like it, but you won't be bored.
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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.
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Most TV shows, after all, quickly fade from memory. This one will haunt your dreams.
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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.
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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]
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AHS is pretty much all scare, all the time: a whole lotta screams, sex, jolts, mashed faces, psychotic behavior, and dead babies.
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Overdoing things is one of Murphy's trademark flaws, but this show has a captivating style and giddy gross-outs.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 1,003 out of 1190
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Mixed: 121 out of 1190
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Negative: 66 out of 1190
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Nov 29, 2011
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Oct 6, 2011
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Dec 14, 2011