{2jtab: Movie Review}

While home ownership - that classic American Dream - is at an all-time low throughout parts of this country, our interest in the classic haunted house narrative and all the paranormal activity behind its closed doors is at an all-time high.  We are, of course, drawn to the supernatural unknown.  It makes sense then that a small cable network would wish to kick-start its new horror anthology by capitalizing on our collective interest with new ghost stories inside an old house.

From spooky to downright disturbed, the constant mystery inside the fictional Murder House betrays its sunny California setting and chills viewers to the bone and beyond.  FX’s American Horror Story, created and produced by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, is a classic and complex narrative about one family’s real nightmare as they awaken to discover that their home is so much more than brick, mortar, and aged wood.

Season One of American Horror Story focuses on the Harmon family as they confront the consequences of infidelity as well as the previous owners of the house they have just purchased.  Ben (Dylan McDermott), Vivien (Connie Britton) and their teenage daughter Violet (Taissa Farmiga) uproot themselves from Boston and move to Los Angeles after Vivien gives birth to a stillborn baby and Ben is caught having an affair with Hayden (Kate Mara).  Both claim to be dealing with their disappointment; both are depressed.  And when their realtor reveals that the house previously belonged to a gay couple whose ownership ended with a murder/suicide, the Harmons discover that information is only the beginning of their new home’s nasty legacy.

Neighbor Constance Langdon (Jessica Lange giving a seriously great performance) and disfigured Larry Harvey (Denis O'Hare) routinely and frequently affect the Harmons' lives…especially when the house and all its inhabitants begin to reveal themselves in weird and twisted ways.  Ben, vowing to be closer to his family, begins seeing his patients in the home.  While Violet starts showing signs of depression, Ben’s new patient - Tate Langdon (Evan Peters) -  attempts to console her with his own demented treatment.

Winning over its audience with gutsy drama rather than settling for typical spooks and chills, American Horror Story is a pot-boiler that doesn’t easily give in to its paranormal pratfalls.  Not that it’s fighting that fact either.  The opening few minutes is proof positive that the show embraces everything we’ve come to expect from the genre.  From it, we already know the “perfect” house isn’t the perfect house.  The magic is in how the episodes, working their momentum slowly, reveal that aspect, allowing the supernatural elements to cook longer.  A fair amount of twisted psychology is thrown into the murderous mix and, after a few episodes boil awhile longer, the terrifying results are a tasty haunted house story by way of Twin Peaks.

Well-developed characters abound inside each of the twelve episodes that make up Season One; the performances are riveting and the setting is a well-manicured lawn of straight-up weirdness.  The dialogue, crisp and cutting edge, is almost perfect for this type of narrative and burns its audience with subtext and character depth.  It is too terribly easy to watch the entirety of Season One in a single setting.  The atmosphere is weirdly haunting and inviting and, pushing sex and nudity to its limits for a television show, cutting edge.  Its high ratings, awesome for supernatural material that doesn’t typically go for easy scares, were hard earned by its cast and crew.

Seldom does paranormal fiction get this good.

{2jtab: Film Details}

MPAA Rating: TV-MA.
Runtime: 532 mins.
Creators: Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk
Cast: Evan Peters; Jessica Lange; Connie Britton; Dylan McDermott; Kate Mara
Genre: TV | Horror
Tagline: Don't Scream...Just Swim!
Memorable Movie Quote: "You're going to die in here."
Distributor: 20th Century Fox
Official Site: www.fxnetworks.com/ahs
Release Date: October 5, 2011
DVD/Blu-ray Release Date: September 25, 2012

Synopsis: A family of three move from Boston to Los Angeles as a means of reconciling their past anguish. They move to a restored mansion, unaware that the home is haunted.

{2jtab: Blu-ray Review}

Component Grades Movie Blu-ray Disc Blu-ray Experience

Blu-ray Details:

Available on Blu-ray - September 25, 2012
Screen Formats: 1.78:1
Subtitles: English SDH, French, Spanish
Audio: English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Discs: 50GB Blu-ray Disc; Three-disc set (3 BDs)
Region Encoding: Region A

Shot on Super 35, American Horror Story looks wondrous on blu-ray.  The 1080p/AVC encode is much better than its broadcast compression errors.  The stock is grainy and, while a stylized choice, really only noticeable in the show’s darker moments.  Detail is of a fine to near-fine quality throughout the presentation.  Color-wise, the picture is loaded with strong saturation in the occasional vivid hues and a tight contrast. Strong reds and blues and blacks abound.  Shadows, even in the grainier places, hold their shape.  While not as immersive as a movie, the lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround sound presentation could certainly wake the dead.  There’s an occasional nice layer of immersive quality to the mix.  It’s tough to fault both the visual and audio of this release.

Supplements:

Commentary:

• Found on the pilot episode, co-creator Ryan Murphy provides information on how the show took shape and openly discusses the filming of the first episode.

Special Features:

The sixty minutes of bonus material and focus on the ideas that went into Season One.  The featurettes are short and, possibly, could have been beefed up to include more thoughts on character development from the cast and writers.  What we have instead is a look at the many ghosts who haunt the house, a fake tour through the haunted house that details its murderous history and a look at the creation of the opening title sequence with main title designer Kyle Cooper and composers Cesar Davila-Irizarry and Charlie Clouser.  The only real featurette included is a nice thirty minute long look at the show's creation, the casting, the horror and sexuality, the makeup, the costuming, and more.  This is where the release could have spoiled its fans.  It does not and leaves us wanting a bit more.

• The Murder House (7 min)
• Behind the Fright: The Making of ‘American Horror Story’ (25 min)
• Overture to Horror: Creating the Title Sequence (9 min)
• Out of the Shadows: Meet the House Ghosts (15 min)

{2jtab: Trailer}

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