American Horror Story

The concept for Tuesday night’s premiere of American Horror Story: Cult is so on-the-nose it can only be called brilliant. ... A murder investigation (led by Colton Haynes), and also a dizzying array of new plot points that distract from what works the best about this standout first episode: the crippling battle between politics and paranoia.

The metaphors may be a problematic mess (I’ll wait to see the whole series before making any judgment), but there’s a crackling energy to Cult as it explores the consequences of a society desperate to assign blame for consequences we don’t even fully understand yet. Cult mines satire out of a real-life farce, and finds terror there too.

The seventh season--subtitled “Cult”--is among the most smartly written and addictive.

Perhaps best of all, it really is a horror story. One that uses artful cinematography and remarkable performances (Grossman and Paulson are best in show) to remind sympathetic viewers of the foreboding dread that hasn't abided since last year and to gin up pit-of-the-gut outright terror.

It’s about the instability that has unearthed itself from the ground since Donald J. Trump was elected, one that feeds our greatest fears, from either side of the aisle, and, while it sometimes displays Murphy's go-for-broke inconsistency of character and style, it also makes for very fascinating television.

This show is trying to do a lot. Some may find that approach excessive and the idea of Grand-Guignol–ing what’s happening in our country a little crass, especially since the show takes some pretty pointed jabs at progressives. Others, especially those well-versed in the series’ over-the-top sensibility and drily snarky humor, will dig into it all with complete relish ... The whole cast is terrific, but the series is (no surprise) a real showcase for Paulson, who’s a bundle of jangled nerves and teary-eyed fear.

So far, I'm properly disturbed by Murphy and company's much-too-close-to-home allegory, amused by some of the sharp social satire and endlessly impressed by Sarah Paulson. That should keep me with American Horror Story: Cult longer than I've stuck with several other seasons.

Unlike the previous six seasons, there is no supernatural element to this one. It’s just people being unsavory people, which is scary enough.

The horror is what counts in any American Horror Story, and judging from the opening three episodes, it’s more than adequate in Cult. It’s also relentless, grisly and deeply warped.

Unsurprisingly, though, it is not Cult’s take on Trump voters that has any real frisson. Murphy doesn’t respect that point of view enough to make it sound like anything other than raving semi-philosophy. But the show is more scathing about liberals and Ally in particular.

The fears fueling Cult are internal and externalized in an intensely gruesome fashion. It feels like just the ticket at some points, and at many others, seems too unsustainable to bear for an entire season. Its relative appeal, then, feels like a moment-to-moment determination.

You’ll have to sit through a few lackluster episodes before American Horror Story: Cult becomes truly enjoyable, but if you’re a fan of the show, it’ll be worth it. Seeming to have found itself with episode four, it’ll certainly be exciting to see if the season can continue its upward trend from here.

Give Cult credit for trying to connect with the current cultural mood, though it offers over-the-top stereotyping of both sides as well as spot-on insight.

While Ms. Paulson and Mr. Peters commit to their characters’ belief in their own derangements, Cult ends up rendering all political sides as caricatures.

It’s exhausting to watch Ally put through the wringer and yet also predictable about how she will emerge from the trial.

Paulson and Peters are electric the few times they’re onscreen together, two political-extremist poles that magnetically attract. I suspect these first three episodes might constitute an extended prologue, frustratingly similar to how the first half of Roanoke was an overextended set-up for the perspective-shifting madness of the final episodes.

Through it all, Peters again excels--performance-wise, at least--as a Trump acolyte whose fires burn white hot from election night on. His full investments in deranged characters remain a wonder to behold. But as Kai’s manipulations thicken, so do AHS: Cult’s overall misfires and excesses.

Every time American Horror Story attempts to imbue real, pressing fear into these statements, in the way that good horror often can--think of this year’s Get Out, for example--it also gets ... well, dumb, in a way I’m not certain the show realizes.

Cult feels superficial as political commentary, its points so obvious and aggressively delivered that it feels at times close to self-parody. It’s hard to know how seriously to take it.

As smart and topical as this show could be, the plot begins to sputter and wheeze way too soon; in trying to come up with the scariest thing it can think of, Cult is oddly low on the sort of chills that would keep a viewer up at night.

The show bursts with clever casting and concepts. ... After a few episodes, however, much of the characterization in Cult starts to seem cartoonish and over-drawn. ... In other words, this is the usual AHS/Ryan Murphy pop-culture potpourri.

American Horror Story: Cult clearly intends to be provocative, using the toxic partisan political divide -- beginning with the 2016 presidential election -- as its jumping-off point. But producer Ryan Murphy's anthology series is too blunt an instrument to effectively probe that terrain, using the equivalent of an axe where a scalpel is required.