The indefatigable Ryan Murphy is back with the ninth season of everyone’s favorite horror anthology series, to be titled American Horror Story: 1984.
The news was revealed by Murphy on his Instagram page as part of a short teaser video. It didn’t show us a whole lot and was characteristically cryptic, but you can see it for yourself below:
While the clip doesn’t give us many particulars of what’ll happen in the new season, the title and video certainly provide us with some pointers. For one, the subtitle 1984 doesn’t seem to indicate that we’re in for an examination of totalitarian government propaganda, but rather a take on classic 80s slasher and horror movies. For my money, this small teaser trailer takes cues primary from John Carpenter’s Halloween. The sinister figure pursuing a woman through the woods looks and moves a hell of a lot like Michael Myers, and his butcher’s knife looks like a straight tribute to the horror icon.
Aside from that, the brief glimpse we get inside the cabin at the end of the clip looks to me a lot like Sam Raimi’s original The Evil Dead, particularly the low angle Murphy has shot his heroine from and the stag’s head on the wall next to her. The show has always confounded expectations, so while AHS might appear to be doing a homage to VHS, I’m sure it’s going to end up a little more complicated than it appears.
One thing that might throw a small wrench into the works though is that we just got a great Halloween movie courtesy of Blumhouse. As such, audiences could be forgiven for thinking that they might as well not bother with a Micheal ripoff when they could just go for the real thing.
Whatever the actual season turns out to be, though, I’m sure we’ll be hearing more details now that this teaser is out. We can already tell you that Emma Roberts is returning alongside Gus Kenworthy, and Evan Peters won’t be back, and as soon as we get any further updates on American Horror Story: 1984, we’ll be sure to let you know.