There are still a lot of questions around American Horror Story: 1984, the ninth season of the show, and so far its most enigmatic. Since Ryan Murphy dropped a trailer in April that seemed to riff on slasher-movie tropes, there’s been speculation about what direction the anthology series will go in this year. We’ve also seen hints from series producer Tim Minear that the show will have a lot for fans of 1980s horror classics to enjoy. Sarah Paulson, meanwhile, seems to be as clueless as the rest of us.
A dystopian theory for American Horror Story: 1984 has been raised this week though by ComicBook.com, albeit mostly based on the title’s apparent reference to George Orwell’s novel about a society constrained by propaganda. The theory relates this to the rise of Donald Trump and “fake news,” although whether this will be the actual direction of the series is questionable given that American Horror Story: Cult immersed itself in politics.
As the most recent season of the show, American Horror Story: Apocalypse, pretty much wrapped up the continuity of the series to date, it’s hard to know where it can go from there. We think that a more stripped down narrative, possibly based around slasher movie tropes and references to 1980s horror could actually be a good change of direction for the property, but we’ll have to wait and see.
In any case, if you consider how overstuffed American Horror Story usually is, then a simpler approach could allow the series to be scarier and less concerned with its own cleverness. We do know that Emma Roberts will be rejoining the cast, and might be a suitable Final Girl after her appearances in the television adaptation of Scream. Evan Peters will sadly not be part of this iteration of the show, however, after appearing in all previous seasons.
Hopefully, American Horror Story: 1984 will answer all of these questions and more when it premieres on September 18th. We should get a more detailed trailer for the show before then, though, so we’ll bring that to you as soon as we have it.