I finally caught up with “American Horror Story” season one via Netflix. I heard a lot of good things about it, and the ads made it look like it was a new kind of horror story, something innovative and original. As a horror buff, I keep hoping that movies and TV will break out of the old and hackneyed ideas that are endlessly repeated.
Unfortunately, AHS starts with the oldest and most hackneyed idea of all. A family buys an old mansion for a lot less than market value because a murder occurred there. Do they do any research about what actually happened? No, they blindly get themselves into a mortgage without even looking the house up on the internet or going to the library and looking at old newspaper stories. They buy a house that is so notorious that it is a stop on a bus tour of murder sites in L.A. and everyone calls it the “Murder House.” The place probably has a Wickipedia entry. How hard would it be to find out that the murder the realtor told them about is just one of many?