‘American Horror Story: 13’ Review: Kills, Camp & Cathartic Cameos Kick Off a Bloody New Chapter
‘AHS: 13’ takes some big swings with a busy and disjointed start to an ambitious season that has the potential to turn into something special
The number thirteen holds a tremendous amount of power.
It’s a cataclysmic number with foreboding origins that go all the way back to the Last Supper, the Knights Templar, and Norse Mythology. It’s a beacon of bad luck and superstition, with such a stranglehold on the world that hotels regularly “skip” the 13th floor. It’s such a profound and unsettling number that there’s even a common phobia that surrounds the number – triskaidekaphobia. All this makes the number thirteen a surprisingly powerful thematic element and connective tissue for not just a season – but a crossover season – of this long-running anthology series.
American Horror Story is no stranger to crossing past seasons’ wires, and AHS: Apocalypse explicitly functioned as a reunion for AHS: Murder House, AHS: Coven, and more. However, American Horror Story: 13 feels like the culmination of all that and so much more. It’s the ultimate exercise in heightening that takes this franchise to ridiculous and unprecedented places, even by its standards.
American Horror Story: 13 debuts with a three-episode premiere and there’s a lot going on in “13,” “1:13 AM,” and “Rauhnacht” between plane crashes, clown school massacres, and urethra insertions. There’s also a whole lot of nothing. On some level it feels like Ryan Murphy’s Magnolia, which is a terrifying concept to think about. Other times, it feels like the most hollow moments of Deadpool & Wolverine. That being said, there’s an undeniable juice to all this that makes this experiment undeniably intriguing, if not also simultaneously infuriating. 13 seasons in, that’s what fans have come to expect from American Horror Story, but there’s still just something different in the water this time around.
“13” begins with an especially strong cold open that pulls out all the stops for its nightmarish take on a sweet rom-com reconciliation. It’s campy, creepy, and contemplative, but it also helps set the tone for everything that follows. It’s a striking way to begin this story that immediately puts the audience on guard and leaves them as paranoid as Joey Pollari’s Ben DeSoto. Madelaine Petsch is also a sublime fit for Ryan Murphy’s heightened genre storytelling, and the worst thing about her performance here is that there’s not more of it.
