By now we know that the American Horror Story producers are messing with us. FX has been periodically sending out teasers, with the claim that one of them is “real” and the others are all fakes and misdirects. The latest, entitled “The Harvest,” hit only a few days ago, but there was another one called “The Mist.” What’s intriguing about this one is that it lines up with a recent listing from both TV Guide and Rotten Tomatoes that refers to the new season as American Horror Story: The Mist.
Interesting, but not very informative. Thus far the teasers for the new season of American Horror Story have indicated all sorts of creepy things, but none of them terribly cohesive. If the theme for this season is “the mist,” what exactly does that mean? Weird creatures coming out of the mist? Ghosts? Maybe, perchance, a different time period? Not that American Horror Story has stuck very close to its guns when it came to settings – American Horror Story: Hotel managed to move much farther afield from its hotel setting without blinking an eye.
Another, perhaps the more pertinent question is whether American Horror Story is going to be stepping on the toes of The Mist TV series, based on the Stephen King novella, which will show on Spike TV. Can we really handle two similarly themed horror shows at the same time? Does anyone even care about American Horror Story any more? Of course, this may be just another deliberate misdirect from the producers of the show, which would hardly be surprising. Given the dull and silly permutations of the last season, I’m a bit tired of Ryan Murphy’s unfinished narratives.
No matter what, we’ll know the future of American Horror Story soon enough, when the new season premieres later this month.
