Showing posts with label
American Horror Story: Freak Show.
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Showing posts with label
American Horror Story: Freak Show.
Show all posts
Four episodes into a series I figure I can begin to make some comments. So lets talk about American Horror Story: Freakshow - and yes, I'm fully aware that for most people the season has just one episode left, but I saved up my episodes on the good ol' DVR and only started watching last Friday - that way I'll be finishing with the rest of you.
Taking place in 1952 Florida, the series departs a little from the previous seasons (each of which told their own story, but with a largely overlapping cast of actors), in that it has very little to do with the Supernatural - no haunted house from season one, or demonic possession from season two, and definitely no witchcraft from season three.
Nope, what this season has is the sideshow, the carnival freakshow in the twilight years, after the second world war and therefore after a time when people had seen enough of the strange and deformed. Clearly borrowing a lot from Todd Brownings Freaks, and maybe a little from both the HBO series Carnivale and Katherine Dunn's novel Geek Love (which is in itself excellent and well worth a post here someday), AHS:Freakshow mixes together a love of the different with some pretty interesting twists.
First of all, I absolutely love the opening credits. Next to the credits from season one (which told a lot of the story of the season, if the viewer knew what they were looking for), it is quite clever, working with old toys, a carnival theme and a genius use of stop-motion animation.
The stories are a lot of fun; disturbing and lurid, but fun, and the evil clown introduced in the pilot may be one of the creepiest looking villains I've come across in a while.
The series uses modern songs for it's musical numbers, which take a little getting used to, but can be fun (not quite up to the level of the Stevie Nicks numbers in season three, or my personal favourite, the bizarre, out of nowhere version of Shirley Ellis' 1964 classic The Name Game, used in Season Two).
I'll definitely be sticking with the season through the end - the story is intriguing, the characters interesting, and as a long term fan of horror film and literature, this is something definitely right up my alley.
One of the few downsides of spending every October focusing on a specific aspect of the horror genre is that it diverts my attention from other places - various games, books, movies and television series all have to wait until I have the time to see a few episodes and give my first impressions.
This year has actually been pretty fun overall, The Flash has been a surprisingly fun superhero story that keeps me coming back every week, Gotham, although flowed with a similar premise to Smallville (let's make a superhero show that we promise will never, ever have a superhero in it - except for maybe in the series finale), has been fun to watch and putting the focus on Jim Gordon has made for a pretty compelling story overall.
I'm a little on the fence still about Constantine - as a long time Hellblazer fan myself, and still feeling a little burned by the 2005 feature film adaption (which would have been a fine film if they just hadn't demanded we view it as a Hellblazer film), the series (which has just been limited to a 13-episode run) does some pretty neat things, in tone it's pretty much on the mark, but a bit too heavy on letting John use overt magic, but as I've found most of the episodes to be pretty fun, I think I'll stick out the run as is.
What has surprised me the most this year is ABCs Forever, a crime procedural which focuses on an immortal man which merges a standard murder-mystery with fantasy elements. If you haven't checked it out yet, it is well worth the watch.
