- Network: FX
- Series Premiere Date: Oct 5, 2011
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Critic Reviews
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While Ms. Paulson and Mr. Peters commit to their characters’ belief in their own derangements, Cult ends up rendering all political sides as caricatures.
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It’s exhausting to watch Ally put through the wringer and yet also predictable about how she will emerge from the trial.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 110 out of 198
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Mixed: 25 out of 198
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Negative: 63 out of 198
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Sep 7, 2017
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Sep 7, 2017
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Oct 1, 2017This review contains spoilers, click full review link to view.