Writers: Brad Falchuk & Ryan Murphy
Director: Ryan Murphy
Starring: Dylan McDermott, Connie Britton, Zachary Quinto, Denis O’Hare
Channel: FX
Episodes: Season 1 – 13 Episodes
Original air date: 7th November 2011
It seems that we’re not entirely exhausted by the world of the supernatural just yet with reality TV milking the cash cow with Ghost Hunters and Mediums pi**ing themselves at the slightest shadow on a wall or creaking of a chair in the corner of a room. Couple these crappy shows with movies and shows about vampires (True Blood, Vampire Diaries) werewolves (Teen Wolf) and zombies (The Walking Dead) it genuinely feels like the market has been over saturated with horror but hold onto your TV remotes because producers are going to cram another one onto the crammed schedule already… are we excited?
Well the trailer definitely caught our attention…
Meet the Harmon family, psychiatrist Ben, homemaker Vivien and daughter Violet who after an extremely tragic and emotionally draining year have decided for the sake of their family to move out of their old home leaving behind their skeletons and have a fresh new start in Los Angeles. However the 1920’s mansion they have chosen to rebuild their lives in is not the dream home they believed to be and the house has more than just old skeletons in the closet and the family have become just another chapter in the nightmare.
The show kicks off with a little girl standing outside the house in ruins; twin brothers tease her then proceed to enter the dilapidated home despite a warning from the young girl that they will die in there! The boys smash anything they can find but when they set foot in the basement and discover the preserved body parts and foetuses in jars they fall victim to the evil watching from the shadows. The story rushes forward and we’re brought to the modern day where Vivian after returning home from a doctor’s appointment about her miscarriage stumbles across her husband having an affair with a student in their bed – the events which cause the family to move to LA.
The first episode introduces us to several other characters but the main focus in the premiere seems to be about the fragile relationship between Ben (Dylan McDermott – Steel Magnolias) and wife Vivien (Connie Britton – Friday Night Lights) who are so caught up in their marital problems are blind to their own daughter’s self-harming.
However we also get to meet Constance, the next door neighbour who seems to know more about the house than she lets on, Moira (Frances Conroy – Six Feet Under) the housekeeper who seems intent on seducing Ben, Tate a new patient with serious issues and a crush on Violet and finally Larry Harvey (Denis O’Hare – True Blood) who used to live in the house and murdered his sleeping wife and two young daughters by setting them on fire.
The first episode throws a lot at you and just as we thought it was all getting boring the frightening scenes where Violet has an encounter with a disfigured creature in the basement quickly snapped us back and it was then that we finally noticed the tricks this show was playing on us. You are lulled into a false sense of security, led to believe that the monster is just around the corner but then nothing happens however if you pay attention you will notice something missing that a lot of western horror movies and TV shows overuse – music!
At first we thought it might have been a volume issue (Warning do not turn your TV up to the last like we did you will scare yourself and wake up a sleeping housemate which is even scarier!) but the show actually drops the background music at certain points and that leaves you vulnerable to the torment.
Performances aren’t exactly staggering and while we can sympathise with Vivien, we found ourselves disliking Ben and not just because heis a womanising narcissist but for the moment he feels just a bit flat and the same can be said for Tate who is meant to be playing the somewhat messed up teen love interest – in fact he is probably the one main fault we had with the first episode.
We’re curious as to how all of this will play out and we have set the box to record the series and with news that FX have confirmed a season two and another thirteen episodes it seems that American Horror Story will be around for a while yet so there is plenty of time for us to get pulled into the mystery and drama of the Harmon family and their new dream/nightmare home.
