American Horror Story Recaps: Drink the Kool-Aid

Look, I want to make it very clear right here and now that I don’t think that depicting historical events should be off the table in fictional movies and TV – hell, I don’t even think they should be stuck with only showing serious events in a po-faced fashion (in fact, I wrote about this very thing with regards to the excellent comedy The Death of Stalin on my newly-launched film site a few days ago). But dammit if American Horror Story has just frequently proved that it can’t treat real-life awfulness with anything close to the baseline of respect it deserves. When I saw that this episode, Drink the Kool-Aid, would be invoking a couple of real-life massacres, I was fucking unconfident, to say the least. I don’t care if Angela Basset is directing: the show just can’t quite get a handle on how to treat tragedy, and so often comes off as lightly camp and disrespectful in the process.

Read the rest of this entry »