10 Reasons Murder House Is The Best Season Of American Horror Story

10. It Reinvented The Genre

Another haunted how idea, strewn out over 10 episodes...yawn!

Hopes were low when we entered the Murder House, but that is what made it so much better. Amityville Horror, The Haunting, and Poltergeist - looking at the old haunted house films, Murder House tried to make it relevant to the 21st Century. The first season took all your favourite tropes and mixed them together in one terrific cocktail. Arguably, if it wasn't for American Horror Story we wouldn't be in such a boom of horror genre TV shows.

As well as having mystery, suspense, and gore, the first season was also uncompromisingly clever. Not confined to one timeline, and with a smorgasbord of interesting characters, the show was a horror nerd's wet dream. It also took on urban legends similar to Candyman, while interweaving the real-life crimes of the Black Dahlia, AND a meta social commentary - Horror Story was the thinking-man's show.

The following seasons tended to get bigger, and you can't help but feel that sometimes it lost what made the first season so claustrophobic. There is no denying that the show always has something interesting to say, but the first season really broke the mould with imaginative storytelling.