Ever since the later seasons of Nip/Tuck, I’ve treated Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk like a toxic friendship. They throw the best parties but they try to hit on your girlfriend. They’ll have your back in a scrap but then spend the rest of the night trying to start a drunken fight. They gave us the first season-and-a-half of Glee but then they gave us the rest of Glee.
Since starting AHS, the formula has changed. Despite a regular casting pool and indications of a shared universe, not having to follow the continuity from one season to the next has taken a lot of the bite out of their biggest flaw. This leads to the promise in the ninth season of American Horror Story.
With the subtitle, “1984,” the premiere makes use of the zeitgeist we’ve come to expect in the clothing, hairstyles, and period-appropriate soundtrack. Real world events and conditions play a part as well. No cell phones or GPS to bail the protagonists out. Veterans of Vietnam’s jungle warfare are decades from qualifying for AARP. Emma Roberts as the good girl, Brooke, makes friends at an aerobics class before she survives an encounter with one of the real world’s most notorious serial killers and her romantic tension with brawny athlete, Chet (real life Olympian Gus Kenworthy) is sidetracked by his bitterness over missing out on The Olympics in Los Angeles.
The cast is rounded out in AHS tradition of former collaborators. Wild child, Montana, and pretty boy, Xavier, are played by AHS alumni, Billie Lourd (American Horror Story: Cult, American Horror Story: Apocalypse) and Cody Fern (Michael Langdon in American Horror Story: Apocalypse). Leslie Grossman (AHS: Cult, AHS: Apocalypse) plays the evangelical camp head with a traumatic backstory. Fresh off Falchuk’s Pose, Angelica Ross, plays the camp’s nurse, Rita, and Glee’s quasi-lead, Matthew Morrison, makes a big impression as camp director, Trevor. Like Kenworthy, DeRon Horton is new to the fold as pharmaceutical provider, Ray. They make for a seemingly capable group. They’ll have to be because former Freakshow clown, John Carroll Lynch, returns for another season; this time as the infamous local legend, Mr. Jingles. And, if the some of the dropped hints and the cliffhanger ending are any indication, they have more to worry about than just Jingles.
Borrowing as many tropes from classic slasher films, ranging from hitchhikers and summer camps to pure-hearted heroines obsessed over by escaped mental patients, American Horror Story: 1984 seems to be bereft of the supernatural in favor psychology. Personally, this has always been my favorite source of dramatic tension. In a genre that has given us franchises about demonic possession relying on jump scares and any monster we can imagine rendered by computer imaging, there is still something primal and unnerving about the wilderness at night, being hunted by Earth’s apex predator, and that a simple sharp object in knowing hands can make anyone as vulnerable as a lamb.
That’s the genius of American Horror Story’s format. The horror genre works by forcing people to confront things that make them uncomfortable or that they’re uncomfortable to be excited by. AHS takes a new set of triggers and applies them each season, allowing everyone to be creeped out, frightened or disgusted in different degrees for different seasons. While this may be tied to my preferred sub-genre, Ryan Murphy has done a good job of baiting the hook regardless.
AHS: 1984 seems to have a “fresh” feel to it and the change in decade makes it feel less tied down to previous seasons. The trailer for future episodes promises mysteries introduced in the premiere to be expanded upon and even the promo still of nine knives in a circle (which happens to correlate to the nine protagonists) has me anxious to see how many “little Indians” are left by the finale. Maybe I’m being a bit too trusting, a bit too optimistic, but I can see myself finishing a season of American Horror Story for the first time since Freak Show.
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