Created by near TV royalty, Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, the currently airing American Horror Story charts the (mis)fortunes of the Harmon family who have started a new life in a haunted house. The latter part not by choice obviously. It's faithful to the horror traditions but has brought the genre bang up to date, resulting in a refreshingly modern, sexy and often genuinely scary horror show. But you can't watch it without noticing that it's riddled with horror clichés. I'm sure the creators know what they're doing, what with them being hugely successful and all, so perhaps these clichés were knowingly included as a homage to the heritage of the genre. Or perhaps not. We'll never know. But let's revel in them anyway. Obviously this will contain spoilers. Here's the top 10:
10. Family uprooting to escape a bad event but not actually escaping anything
Back in Boston, Ben Harmon was caught cheating on his wife with a much younger woman, so the family have moved to LA to turn their back on all the old skeletons and start anew. They all must have seen TV shows before so should know full well that this absolutely never works. Guess what? By episode 2 the crazy-bit-on-the-side fromBostonwho sparked their move is already causing all manner of grief. And then there's all the violent ghosts.
9. Disenfranchised teenager seeking solace in the arms of an even more troubled teen against the wishes of the father
Violet Harmon is understandably upset with her father for his infidelity, and she's less than understandably upset with her mother for pretty much everything else. Her father is a psychiatrist and one of his clients is Tate, a borderline psychotic Kurt Cobain wannabe. He quickly takes a shine to Violet and her father, rather sensibly, forbids her from spending time with him. And obviously she follows his instructions to the letter
8. Over forgiving female characters
When Violet is having trouble with a bully at school, Tate 'helps' her out. Luring the bully into the dark basement, he carries out some weird strobe-lit ritual that generates some weird imagery and results in the bully having a nasty bite mark on her face, either from Tate or from some nether-creature brought into being by his witchery. Even if Violet was sceptical of the supernatural element, surely she would draw a line under the relationship after seeing her boyfriend terrorise another teenage girl and bite her on the face. Who bites someone on the face? Honestly! But no, she's angry for a bit but quickly gets over it This cliché also displayed magnificently and ridiculously in True Blood. Sookie Stackhouse professes to be 'a sister' to Tara Thornton we see that she's almost a brother to 40Tara's cousin, Lafayette. So one would think that a man, even a vampire, who had imprisoned and tortured Lafayette over a period of days, and stood by and allowed Tara to be repeatedly violated and raped by another vampire - would have burned his bridges with Sookie. But apparently not, she almost trots out the words of the stereotypical victim of domestic abuse "you don't know 'im like I do, 'e wouldn't 'urt a fly".
7. Main characters being the last to know the bloody obvious
When the Harmon's move into their nightmare house, they are made aware that the last owners died in a murder suicide by the estate agent, or realtor if you're in America. They don't know the full history though. Since the house was first built, murders took place year after year, all of them thoroughly documented. The house is even on the Murder Tour, and called the Murder House and the Harmon's apparently didn't pick this up before they moved in, even though it's exactly the sort of thing that would have come up on even the most cursory of google searches. And A Columbine style massacre happened at a nearby high school and they didn't know about that either.
6. Why do they trust the clearly off-her-rocker next door neighbour?
Jessica Lange is brilliant as Constance, the all-knowing, bitter and twisted neighbour of the Harmon family. She not only knows all about the house, its history and its spectral occupants, but goes out of her way to keep the freakish status quo. It's reminiscent of the Castavets in Rosemary's Baby, who are passed off as quirky elderly couple but who are really setting everything in motion for Rosemary to give birth to Beelzebub, the Dark Lord, The Necromancer, whatever. In American Horror Story, it's clear that Contance is more than a little bit weird, and yet the Harmons continue to take her into their confidence, even when she starts to bring plates of raw offal into their kitchen for Vivien to eat raw, "For the baby". And why don't they take more action when her daughter keeps breaking into their house?
5. Massive shocking event that's never properly discussed
Here's the thing: Some ridiculously supernatural event will take place and the characters are suitably shocked and awed at the time, but afterwards they don't give it anything like the credence it's due. This doesn't just happen in horror. I didn't get past season 1 of Lost because some earth shattering event would happen, like an intense, threatening spooky fog chasing the main characters and scaring the crap out of them (possibly making a polar bear appear on a desert island - I forget the details), then the next day they'd all be on the beach playing makeshift golf* or something, and not one person would be saying "but what about that scary fog eh? What the fuck was that about?" In Horror Story, it happens all the time. Something completely out of the ordinary happens and the characters either don't talk about it afterwards, or they just give it a passing mention and move on. To anybody else in real actual life, any one of these 'happenings' would have life changing connotations, but not to these guys. *in case some anal geek posts a response, yes, I know that they didn't play golf on the beach, they were slightly inland when Hurley got his first full episode** and constructed an impromptu golf course ** yes, I also know that the golf episode probably wasn't Hurley's first full episode*** *** actually, I don't know this, I'm just guessing. I can't be even be arsed to google it.
4. Police not following adequate procedure
Depending on the type of show, police procedure in TV land is either meticulously thorough or completely non-existent. In CSI, every fibre is analysed, every statement is considered, every print is scanned. In American Horror Story the plot would probably fall flat on its arse if the police paid any kind of attention to any of the weird stuff that happens, so they just don't pay any attention at all. When the Harmon home is invaded by three wannabe copycat killers attempting to re-enact a murder committed in the house some years before, the results are messy. There is blood all over the walls and the chopped-in-half body of one of the attackers is found a few blocks away. The police quickly assume that the attackers turned on each other and see no reason to gather any forensic evidence or answer more than a few questions. When the crazy-bit-on-the-side comes back from the dead to terrorize the family she is picked up by the private security guard hired by the family, who apprehends her and takes her to the police station, in what looks like a secure vehicle. She disappears from the locked car (because she's a ghost), and the only comeback from that is the guard telling the family later that "Oh, by the way, that crazy psycho bird threatening to stab you with that broken bit of glass? Well she got out of my car somehow". There are loads more but just one more Ben dozes off during a session with a suicidal patient who proceeds to slash her own wrists in his office and gets picked up by the police later. It turns out that she has his Dictaphone in her bag with a recording of his, at best, malpractice and at worst, criminal negligence - the attending police officer just calls him an arsehole and that's the end of the matter.
3. Why are they even together, what's in it for them?
One of the big plot vehicles so far in this show is that of Ben Harmon fighting to keep his wife. He is forced to take certain questionable decisions because he doesn't want to put his marriage under any more strain. Ben's wife Vivien, despite taking the moral high ground over his duplicity, is also at pains to keep the family together. And the watching viewer, well, me at a least, is left wondering what it is they're trying to save. They're clearly not at all happy; they never smile together and all they do is argue. Ben spends a lot of screen-time declaring how he'll fight for his family, yet can't keep it in his trousers whenever a female character looks his way. It's clear why the maid turns your head, Ben (even though she's really about 60), but don't be so sanctimonious about it. I've said that Vivien is at pains to keep the family together but admittedly this does decline after Ben's crazy-bit-on-the-side tries to cut the unborn baby out of Vivien's stomach.
2. All kinds of shit happening in the basement
All the time. All the way through. Come on!
1. Spooky dead figure appearing in mirror
When I was a kid I saw a Disney film called Watcher in the Woods. It was probably awful and not scary at all but then I was a mere slip of a thing so it's acceptable that it scared the bejesus out of me. It was one scene in particular; a kid looking in a mirror and suddenly he sees the reflection of a bandaged figure behind him. Over the years since then I've seen that technique over and over again and it's no longer remotely scary. The best I've seen is actually in the Humanitarian of the Year episode of the Sarah Silverman Program - where Sarah sees a ghoulish face in her bathroom mirror, screams, then sighs with relief and says, "Thank God, I'm still pretty." Horror Story has several instances of this, and admittedly one of them is a twist on the old device, but still, they do it. And why do people in horror dramas always keep their shower curtains closed when they're not using the shower and looking in the mirror in near darkness? SO SOMETHING CAN JUMP OUT FROM BEHIND THEM, THAT'S WHY. All of that said, I'm still looking forward to the next episode