Now I know what you're thinkin'; American Horror Story, the new horror show on FX, isn't all that Lovecraftian - what gives? It might just be the state of mind HPL's stories have put me in but honestly I think this show has some very deep, old school, Gothic ideas going on that might reveal themselves to have a touch of Mythos-esque taint on them.
The show starts Dylan McDermott and Connie Briton as a married couple gripping with, bare minimum, two apocalyptic things that have wreaked havoc on their psyches; the difficult miscarriage of there second child and the subsequent affair the husband has. We jump to months later and they are heading to LA with their teenage daughter to start a new life in an old Victorian-style house. And yeah - there's a whole lot of "bad juju" in that house.
I watched the pilot on Saturday evening with my wife - the mother of our two year old and a certified doula - and my Mom - mother to four grown kids. The opening sequence of the show takes place in 1978 when a little girl with Down's syndrome tells a pair of rambunctious twin boys the abandoned house they're about vandalize is going to kill them. "You're gonna regret it," she warns. As the boys gleefully smash up the house they come upon the darkened basement and jar after jar of - wait for it - baby parts. Yes, you read that right. Dismembered parts of babies in formaldehyde. It's all very clinical, seen in half glimpsed flashes, but there they are. My Mom didn't like this - she's sensitive. The twins then have an encounter with something in the basement - a small, furry, bestial humanoid. The twins do, indeed, regret going into the house. After this opening scene a brilliant, lengthy title sequence plays out, again with some disturbing imagery of children. My mother left the room - too intense! Ha!
Let me say before going any further that I think the show is, as of the pilot, one of the best horror TV series ever. It is dark, disturbing, beautifully written and the creators know something about the genre. The show has gotten under my skin and I can't get it out of my mind (did I see something in that one moment in the basement, something about that kid's face seemed wrong... - and who was in that suit! What was going through her - OK, gotta move on. But I can't!)
But what's so Lovecraftian about American Horror Story? To radically overly simplify it it's a haunted house story. There is, buried deep into the backstory, a far reaching taint of evil in the foundations of the house. The mural under the wallpaper in the music room is a depiction of something old and profane - demons whispering to wisemen, people in shocking grimaces hanging at the end of nooses. This taint of evil might be ancient, reaching back centuries, or millennia. What we see as a shapeshifting maid (the wife sees a middle-aged hausfrau, the husband sees a sensual young woman) could be the current incarnation of an age-old entity. And the furry thing in the basement half-glimpsed in shadow and stobelight is very much like Lovecraft's "rat-thing" in Dreams in the Witch-House or the host of unspeakable beasts beneath the Brooklyn apartment building in The Horror at Red Hook.
I've stated before that HPL was not a believer in religions - was fully an atheist, really, as am I - so the crosses held up against evil in the mural suggest they may be playing in the traditional playground of devils and Satan, holy water and hallelujahs. That's fine - it's a fun mythology albeit one that loses some of it's power once you leave the trappings of religion behind. It's one of the reasons I've been so attracted to Lovecraft's work; the horrors of the unknown are much more frightening when you know there is nothing that can stop them.
I'm watching the series with an eye open for things that suggest an origin of cosmic horror - not something from space but rather from Outside, as Lovecraft might say. I highly recommend you give the pilot a try - if you are not too sensitive.
Might I steer you towards a better show that is also just beginning to air? Try the BBC's The Fades. Its smarter, more creative and lacks the sappy manipulations of American Horror Story.
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