American Horror Story: Apocalypse - Review

Promotional Image for American Horror Story's eighth season.

An absolute delight for fans, even if some episodes did seem too bland for the long-awaited crossover.

Blood, witchcraft, gore, explosions and some pretty extreme examples of satanism have carried us through to the end of another season. This season was the ones fans had been waiting for – The Murder House & Coven crossover. For the most part, it delivered!

First of all, Jessica Lange made her long-awaited return as Constance Langdon and it was worth the wait. Lange has a presence on screen that puts the viewer in awe of her talents. Simply just meandering around the shot was enough to make fans and critics alike go crazy and my opinion was no different. However, not all the acclaim can be left with Lange. She may have had some pretty iconic pieces of dialogue, but Emma Roberts also brought back her iconic role as Madison Montgomery in style. She was the cold-hearted witch that everyone grew to love and that didn’t change here; Roberts seems to have a talent for playing these types of roles so seeing her boss the Apocalypse was what all fans needed. Francis Conroy and Sarah Paulson also delivered some impressive performances, and they really carried the season with their charm. However, if Joan Collins has been in every episode, she would’ve outshone everyone – she really sold every line she said.

The Apocalypse did dip now and then, with episode 8 and 9 carrying a nature that seemed ill-fitted to the rest of the season. They felt more like filler episodes that weren’t really necessary in the long run. Much more could’ve been done to amp these up and keep fans in excitement for the finale rather than dread at it being as poor as its prior episodes. Other than that, the remainder of the season didn’t really need to do much apart from be iconic and that’s what it was. There didn’t seem to be much room for bad dialogue when characters we grew to love were pulling out all the stops to be brilliant.

One feature of American Horror Story that is unique to the series is the quirky directing with swooping shots some camera trickery making an appearance numerous times in pretty much every episode. It was a nice surprise to see Sarah Paulson try her hand at directing and she truly delivered in the position – here’s to more of the Paulson vision!

On a more negative side, the actual Apocalypse seemed to take a backseat with many of the characters in the first few episodes being forgotten for the remainder of the series. Ash Santos, Kyle Allen and Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman we’re near enough forgotten and even when they made an appearance, It was a struggle to care. This did impact the gravitas of the series as it was overrun with characters that had little power on screen. Fortunately, they were quickly forgotten and the real action could begin with the return of the witches and the characters of Murder House!

Cody Fern in a Promotional Image as his character, Michael Langdon.

Cody Fern played the satanic role of Michael Langdon and he pulled it off impressively. He gave a calm and mysterious tone to the character that made him somewhat likeable making the actual story hard to follow for the viewer as it was very easy to want him to win the battle he put upon himself.

Overall, the Apocalypse may not have been Earth-shattering, but pulling faults with the cast and dialogue is rather difficult when almost every character was iconic. So many scenes will go down as the show’s greatest purely because of how iconic it was. Having said that, for a casual viewer this season probably isn’t the finest, but for a fan, it’s all you could wish for!

SCORE - 9/10