>Like, I've seen scary nun movies. I've seen asylum movies.
>I've seen German torture doctor movies. (Marathon Man for the
>win.) I've seen movies where the villain is very similar to
>Bloody Face. etc.
>
>Just because there's new actors and hyperactive editing
>doesn't mean it's scary. It's stylish, absolutely, and some of
>the actors are going for it. But it seems more committed to
>being fucked up than to developing characters I care about--
>pretty much all of them are sociopathic, and the two
>characters that aren't are already captured for torture, so we
>only get the barebones of who they are before it's Torture
>Time.
>
>I'm not trying to hate on it, as it's earnest and it *looks*
>great and it's fast-paced, so it won't ever be boring. It just
>seems more campy than scary at the moment. The opening scene
>is unquestionably campy, not to mention most of the Jessica
>Lange/other nun stuff. Maybe the writing will get more
>straight-faced and character driven as it progresses... but
>I'm fine with it being just straight wacky.


actually it's not familiar at all. name a show where the entire series/episodes takes place in an insane asylum and the "sane" characters are potentially going to be the very patients who are committed?

the tropes you mentioned above are familiar in horror, gothic and not.

but AHS: Asylum is going there with placing this season in an insane asylum, during the early to mid 60s when much of what we know as mental illness, psychiatry, psychology and psychotherapy was still in the process of becoming legitimate.

the hydrotherapy baths, and the methods they used to "treat" patients back then are quite terrifying (and from what I know from older relatives who had loved ones who were sent to asylums and had those methods used on them, quite tragic).

and the fact that anyone who's LGBT was considered "deviant", etc. and frequently were "cured" of their "illnesses" was through shock therapy..trust, that's part of the show this season (we saw that in the first ep with Sarah Paulson's character)

i hope the writing will be better this season than last...but, i think you should probably give the show a better chance than that.

I mean, you don't even like horror so you're already coming in with a very obvious "i'm not going to like this" when you really should be more open.

At least, watch a couple eps before you dismiss it entirely.

and, if anything, the show is a mix of gothic horror, melodrama, suspense, and thriller. For the most part, Murphy does it well. Mostly...