| Remember when American Horror Story started out with a simple premise: a thriller which threw in elements of Los Angeles' well-known haunted history? What we now know as American Horror Story: Murder House feels like a niche in Ryan Murphy's world of horror tales which have progressively gotten broader and broader as the seasons go on. Murphy's latest return to television takes material that has been mined endlessly, not just throughout the last 30 years but in the previous twelve months! In fact, the '80s are so popular right now, there's hardly anything on TV that isn't either inspired or calling back to the era of excess. AHS: 1984 tells the story of a group of camp counselors fighting to survive the return of a serial killer named Mr. Jingles as well as the notorious mass murderer, the Night Stalker (a.k.a Richard Ramirez). While watching this season, I immediately thought: what can Murphy and his crew tell us about the 1980s that we haven't already heard? There are classes, books, television shows, and movies that have deconstructed every facet of '80s horror from its racism to "the final girl" tope. So far, Murphy doesn't seem interested in saying anything, instead treating AHS: 1984 as a vessel for nostalgia. He hopes you'll get so drunk on the punch, thanks to an onslaught of campiness, that you won't notice you're being robbed of a worthy story.
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