American Horror Story to eschew usual laser focus in favor of "Double Feature" 10th season
TV Features American Horror Story
When we think about Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story, certain terms come springing immediately to mind. “Precision.” “Laser-focus.” “That guy with the drill penis doing awful things to Max Greenfield.” And yet, it sounds like Murphy and his regular coterie of actors—now featuring Macaulay Culkin, natch—might be, shock of shocks, dividing their attention a bit for the next installment of the show Which is to say, the 10th season of AHS has now formally had its title announced: Double Feature.
Besides immediately getting “Science Fiction Double Feature” stuck in our heads—thanks, Ryan—the title also alludes to what will apparently be a bifurcated structure for the new season, with one story “by the sea” and the other “by the sand.” Of course, FX’s promotional department broadcast this idea by showing a video of a beach, which is both sea and sand, so…Hmm.
This isn’t the first time AHS has split its focus formally, of course; the series delights in occasionally screwing with its own format, most notably with the Roanoke season that jumped from a faux-documentary story to in-the-moment horror. It’s also just been a minute since the show was back doing its extreme version of camp horror on TV; the last season, 1984, wrapped up in all its VHS-y glory back in 2019. No word yet on when, exactly, Double Feature can be expected to debut, but series regulars Sarah Paulson, Evan Peters, Frances Conroy, and more are all expected to return to the bloody fold.
12 Comments
Dear Lord. A Ryan Murphy ‘Double Feature’. Oh, the humanity! Oh, the rapid, insane tonal shifts in probably just the first 5 minutes.The question is, is this going to be a gorgeous trainwreck or just a trainwreck? Is the ridiculousness going to “spark joy” or “clutter our hearts”?Oh boy.
I thought 1984 was going to be terrible and it ended up being not bad. Never count AHS out!So long as he keeps making more of this and no more Ratched.
Yes please. I’m entirely fine with going off the rails in style like AHS. Ratched was… not that at all.
1984 disappointed me. I’ve always felt like 80s slashers are the unloved stepchildren of the horror genre (itself the unloved stepchild of the movie genre), so I was really looking forward to a twist on the Jason formula, maybe akin to when Stephen King was talking about writing a novel from Jason’s POV. And we sort of got that, but like…we also got a ton of the “sentient ghosts are sad that they’re trapped somewhere” stuff that we already got in Murder House. And Hotel. And (to a lesser degree) Roanoke.
Not to mention the effects on the kills looked like hot garbage.
Could actually work, since usually by the mid point the story goes off the rails in the nonsense anyway. If anything this means the stories might actually be MORE focused.
This is true. Roanoke and Cult are my favorite seasons, because they’re the ones where it feels like Murphy took his Adderall and actually focused on a single, coherent story for the entire season.
Besides immediately getting “Science Fiction Double Feature” stuck in our heads—thanks, Ryan…Eh. It’s a pretty great song. It might even be my favorite from that soundtrack—and that’s saying something, because I love RHPS.
I was happy to see Lily Rabe back in a main role filming in Provincetown. I guess her character is going to be pregnant. This must be the by the sea part.
In this household we worship Lily Rabe. Really she was consistently the best actor or actress after Jessica Lange. After season 4 she is the MVP when she appears in more then one episode. She’s wickedly talented.
As a person who wasn’t a huge fan of Coven to begin with, Murphy completely lost me with Apocalypse, which was a horror genre I genuinely love. I might check back in if there is some Plan 9 esque cheese in these new ones
I don’t know why people aren’t constantly talking about this dude’s weird, fucked up obsession with sexual violence. Like he probably shouldn’t have a career anymore, there’s some shit in that guy’s closet for sure.