«American Horror Story» - Series Review by Kinoafisha

A girl touches her stomach in her dream. But something, or rather, someone, makes her wake up. It's a figure in a black cloak with a hood, who jumps off the bed and swiftly escapes from the luxurious apartment of its inhabitant. She can't catch the intruder, so the girl simply locks herself in and calls the police, noticing that her hands and the carpet on the floor are covered in blood, and a picture resembling an embryo is torn. From this moment, the plot goes back a week, when a young couple visits a clinic to try to conceive a child after several unsuccessful attempts.

Anna Oakcott (Emma Roberts) is a successful actress, an A-list star, whose photos grace city billboards and fashion magazine covers. Along with her agent and best friend Shivon (Kim Kardashian), she arranges an interview on Andy Cohen's evening show. Anna meticulously schedules everything in her calendar, where social events and medical procedures occupy almost all the time slots. However, someone or something clearly interferes with her pregnancy planning, so her appointments with a mysterious doctor inexplicably get rescheduled in the calendar, and medicines end up not where she left them. Additionally, Anna is pursued by several strange characters - either insane stalker fans or otherworldly beings in extravagant outfits. And even after a miscarriage, it seems that life is developing inside her.

"American Horror Story" (if you happened to learn about it only by the 12th season) is an anthology series that began on FX back in 2011, where each new season is essentially a standalone miniseries shot in one of the many subgenres of horror. In Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk's tales of terror, fiction intertwines with real facts from U.S. history and previous installments, creating a unified meta-universe. The actors, meanwhile, migrate from season to season, playing completely new characters in different locations. Emma Roberts, who appeared in the show in the ninth season titled "1984," has returned from the veterans to the recent episodes.

Throughout various years, "American Horror Story" has invited stars ranging from Adam Levine of Maroon 5 to singer Lady Gaga. In the twelfth season, Cara Delevingne and Kim Kardashian joined the cast. While it was understandable to some extent with the former - model Cara has been actively involved in films and series (such as "Suicide Squad" and "Only Murders in the Building") for quite some time, Kim's participation came as a surprise to many. She had convincingly portrayed only herself in the reality show "The Kardashians" up until now. But here, a role was specially written for the shapewear mogul, where Kim embarks on her own Kardashian adventure. Surprisingly, she handles it quite well. However, apart from her, there's nothing here that we haven't seen in other horror stories. And the acting performance of the social lioness, while shining as brightly as Lady Gaga's in "Hotel," hardly deserves an Emmy award.

The twelfth season of "American Horror Story" reeks slightly of carrion, as it seems that "American Horror Story" has run its course. Alluding to the early seasons, it tells a tale of pregnancy in the spirit of Roman Polanski's "Rosemary's Baby," which has already been explored in "Murder House," where the protagonist gave birth to a demonic creature. And Emma Roberts has already played an actress in the third season. However, the plot is not based on an original idea this time, but on the mystical novel "A Tender State" by Danielle Valentine, which is hailed as a feminist perspective on the same "Rosemary's Baby." Additionally, in "Delicate," the unchanging showrunner Ryan Murphy has handed over the reins to Hallie Faifer, the writer of the third season of "American Horror Story" titled "Impeachment." Yet, despite a few innovations, this latest installment fails to bring back the youthfulness and energy to the project.

The series turns out to be nothing more than a variation on the Polanski theme for millennials, a cool crowd in which the old satanists from the 1968 film have been replaced by privileged New York residents, eerie and out of place, popping up here and there in different parts of Manhattan. Stylishly shot and slightly eccentric, "American Horror Story" combines a haunting image of menstrual blood by artist Sonya, a staff of surgeons dressed in red, a smoking goth Ivy in red boots and gloves, and the enigmatic Mrs. Picher with her thin eyebrow thread. But all these details and others - a nest with an embryo, strands of hair appearing, a spider on the head, and the ubiquitous Barbie doll with the name Ann on her belly - all seem like childish babble. Apparently, much like the main heroine, the show's creators are still unable to overcome their superpower of turning dreams into nightmares that are immediately forgotten.