With Hulu now having American Horror Story 1984, many people have the opportunity to see this season for the first time.This review is spoiler-free. Personally, I give this season a 2.25/5 stars (5 being absolutely drop dead amazing). Why this specific rating (if you want a more relatable rating, 45/100)? Because this season (in my honest opinion) has a lot of problems. There are a few redeemable plot points and characters here and there, but overall, it is not one of their stronger seasons.
I will split this timeline for this season into three parts. The first third starts out pretty strong. It established its setting well (mid 1980s at a summer camp). The 2nd part falls down pretty hard (and frankly gets pretty confusing with the plot). The third part doesn’t really recover. The final episode’s musical number at the very end with very touching, but that’s one of the few things that is good about this part of the season.
The makeup choices are questionable for how they age certain characters. One of the characters just looks like they’ve been chainsmoking constantly (rather than just add a few years of age to the face). Does the fashion and makeup otherwise fully embrace the 1980s? Absolutely. This was what I did love about this season. The fashion was perfectly on point.
Similar to past seasons, this season goes “kill-crazy” (think about freakshow with how they went on a murder spree) during the 2nd part of the season. Frankly, I am over this trend. I am a published author and currently working on my second book. If you kill someone, it needs to be for a purpose. If you kill someone, it must somehow contribute to the overall story/plot. If you magically remove this event and not a thing changes? The murder shouldn’t have happened. I understand AHS 1984 is a bit (for lack of better phrasing) “campy” but the murders were clearly supposed to have meanings. By the end of the season I was like “wait, who are half these people that died?”
This season does recycle the idea of ghosts. Ghosts are fun to play with the idea of, but they don’t really change anything (or add to the lore) that was established with ghosts in American Horror Story MurderHouse (or Hotel).
The soundtrack was done well for this season. Overall they do a great job with the soundtracks for each season of AHS.
The character development for this season is a bit all over the place. Certain characters have great development, others, not so much. Montana was my favorite character in this season, but to be frank, there was not a lot to her character beyond a stereotypical “revenge” storyline.
