Created in 2011, this 10 season show, with a spinoff and countless fans, brings all kinds of horror for fans to enjoy. American Horror Story has a unique plot line from all other shows, it rotates the same actors but each season they have new characters and a new plot. And the most intriguing thing that keeps fans coming back is that all the seasons are intertwined in one way or another. 

I love this show, because of all the themes and complexity of it all. The seasons in order go: Murder House, Asylum, Coven, Freak Show, Hotel, Roanoke, Cult, Apocalypse, 1984, and most recently Double Feature. My favorites are Hotel and Apocalypse. In Hotel, Lady Gaga is the guest star, and it was exciting to see her acting abilities. Apocalypse was a favorite because it connected 3 different seasons back into one, and it was a cool full circle moment for me.  

The show has seasons with better plot lines than the others. Some seasons that definitely missed the mark for me are Freak Show and Double Feature. Freak Show was  a good idea, but fell short. The ending was very abrupt, and there was no character development. As for Double Feature, they were advertising this as a split season that was going to be so mysterious and amazing, and in reality it wasn’t. It being only 5 episodes per plotline, the story was very rushed. And the concepts were almost childlike. It didn’t feel like the normal sophisticated horror plots that this show usually presents. One concept featured a struggling writer and his family in a town of cannibal monsters. And the other had us look into Area 51, and the conspiracies surrounding it after 4 friends all get pregnant with alien babies. 

American Horror Story brings many different concepts that all horror fans can appreciate. It features a classic haunted house, ghosts in an old hotel, vampires, and even killer clowns. It does a great job of embedding true stories into different aspects. For example in Freak Show, Twisty the Clown, is based off of the “killer clown”, John Wayne Gacy. In Hotel, James Patrick March, is based off of the real life serial killer H.H Holmes. Or in Murder House, it features Elizabeth Short, more commonly known as the “Black Dahlia”.

Overall, American Horror Story is a show that incorporates horror, comedy, and complex characters all into one. Meanwhile it does touch on heavier and scarier topics, seasons like Cult, Hotel, and Apocalypse have many comedic moments. It’s a show that makes you wonder if you would survive the seasons. I highly recommend it to anyone who loves true crime, horror, and mystery.