Wednesday 14 June 2017

A review of American Horror Story (mostly)

If you keep staring at a really difficult problem you're never going to fix it. You need to walk away for a moment and shift your perspective because right now, you’re just too close to see a solution. As any of us can attest to, we’ve all experienced it at some point or another – there can be an eternity in a moment. You have to take those moments, you have to stop being you for a heartbeat and come back with fresh eyes. The pauses are important.

With that in mind, I’m going to change things up and launch into a review blog, of sorts, about a show I have watched recently that I feel is worth a review. I dallied a while over whether or not to recommend it, and my hesitation over this will become clear as I explain myself. But the main reason I decided to sit and write finally this was that the show made me think, and ultimately I believe that any story that makes you think is worth experiencing. This show has moved forward my ideas regarding horror, on why I'm drawn to it as a genre, and why I think it's an important part of our spectrum of experience.

The show I’m going to talk about is American Horror Story, hereafter referred to as AHS. Now, I predict that a few of you might react with ‘oh, but I don’t like horror’, and, I hear that, but also, I sincerely feel that you might be missing out by cutting off this genre entirely. It’s also in my vested interest to encourage you to like horror, if only in the hopes that you’ll then read my first book (I have no delusions of grandeur, it’s not like it’s going to be published, but it is going to be finished) So, please bear with me on the recommendation, and I’ll come back to why it matters later.