10 Best American Horror Story Characters
The core cast have played dozens of characters over the years, but who’s the very best?
American Horror Story changed the game for horror, and one of the key developments it made was bringing characterisation back to the genre. While horror tales have been a classic of cinema for decades, characters had been sidelined in the early 00s as shock factor movies like Saw, Hostel, and The Human Centipede rose to prominence.
Ryan Murphy & Brad Falchuk, fresh off the commercial and critical success of Glee, changed that. It might have seemed like a strange place to go to after such a happy, preppy show, but both men have also worked on Nip/Tuck, Scream Queens and 9-1-1. Glee and AHS seem to represent the opposite ends of their writing spectrum.
By pivoting away from the bright neon glow of Glee and building a dark, creepy, atmospheric world in Season One’s Murder House, American Horror Story was a smash hit success, reviving and creating careers along the way. The serial anthology approach is a rarity in television, and it’s only so successful because of all the characterisation they manage to squeeze into each season.
Deciding the best character came down to acting, narrative and popularity in the fanbase. With that in mind, better received seasons are more likely to feature.
10. Kai Anderson
Cult’s sole representative on this list, Evan Peters’ Kai Anderson was a starkly drawn character who represented the scariest monster American Horror Story has ever depicted: society itself.
Or radicalisation within society, to be more exact. Cult held a mirror up and forced us to stare at it, and the thing we saw gazing back was Kai Anderson. Cult eschewed the usual supernatural tropes and left us with only the evil of mankind. Kai personified this with a discomforting charm.
We saw him channeling Tyler Durden as the charismatic leader of his cult, but underneath it all he was far less smooth than Brad Pitt’s character. Kai was prone to bouts of apoplectic rage, and while Durden just wanted mindless destruction, Kai engineered everything to put himself on a path to the top.
Political parodies can often fall short in television, especially when they’re parodying somebody already so over the top as Donald Trump. But in Kai, AHS winks at real life just enough, while still delivering the devastating violence with their usual flair.
Another Peters’ character with charm and power might also have made the cut in James Marsh, but Hotel already has some representation in the top ten.