Mysterious and spooky and all together ookey American Horror Story

From the creators of Glee and Nip/Tuck, American Horror Story is a slick and twisted amalgam of the subversive satire of the cartoon version of the Addams Family and the fun inducing gore of the first—and still the best—Scream movie.

Chills and scares come at you rapid fire from the Pez-disperser like script. Spitting out incongruously humorous, touching, sexy and often demented moments by equal measure usually at the same time. Unlike the slow methodical cancerous descent into fear of Stanley Kubrik's The Shinning, AHS is filled with paroxysms that jolt you on to a razor's edge of anticipation. Witty dialogue and innovative kookery coupled with bizarro characters surrounding a seemingly ordinary family who are themselves rife with dark secrets make for a joyously frightening psychosexual hoot.

American Horror Story gets off to a shocking start by breaking one of the few taboos left in entertainment: infanticide. The first five minutes slap you in the face with a young girl with Down Syndrome trying to stop two little boys, who are obviously the neighborhood roughs, from entering the derelict Victorian mansion that becomes the central character of the show. What the identical twins find in the basement are dismembered baby parts floating in formaldehyde and a mysterious entity that decidedly doesn't like children or rather likes to cause them terrible physical pain and death. As we quickly and squeamishly find out.

Fast-forward some years later and a family trying to buy a new life in Los Angeles has purchased the beautifully restored home. A devastated mother coping with both the stillbirth of her youngest child and her husband's infidelity along with their morose daughter move from the east coast to sunny southern California hoping it will repair their damaged family. Quickly finding out why the massive home was so cheap (it was the scene of the gruesome murder-suicide of its previous owners) the Harmon family unpacks and settles into some very strange WTF occurrences; including finding what looks like a dissection lab in the basement and a secret sadomasochist dungeon.

Vivien Harmon (Connie Britton) is the heart of the family and around whom the story unfolds. Played straightforwardly without pretense Ms. Britton’s understatedness allows the zaniness of the supporting players to shine through. She is hurt and aggrieved by both her horrible miscarriage and catching her husband having sex with one of his 20 year-old students. Now almost a year later she’s taxed with the loss of her child, marriage and libido all the while her husband wants to reconcile in a more biblical sense. Dylan McDermott plays her lumbering psychiatrist husband Dr. Ben Harmon. Mr. McDermott toggling between shouting rants and pouting earnestness makes for a disjointed performance that reminds me of his affected acting from The Practice, but he’s most believable when playing the family patriarch as a creepy, narcissistic horn dog. Taissa Farmiga (Vera’s younger sister) effectively brings an almost gothic gloominess to her role as misunderstood tween Violet (she’s a cutter) that would make Wynona Ryder’s original mournful teenager from Beetlejuice proud.

But what makes this show hum however, is the cabal of aberrant nuts that roam the Southland’s landscape. Frances Conroy (Six Feet Under) can bring bucket loads of crazy to a role like no other. Her housekeeper Moira sets just the right tone of mystery as she tries to seduce Dr. Harmon. Of course he doesn’t see the milky-eyed harridan that Moira is today but instead he sees her as her former young hottie self (Alexandra Breckenridge) in a French maid outfit that plays up to his philandering. Evan Peters plays Tate, a patient of Dr. Harmon’s who likens himself to a serial killer. He falls in love with the daughter. Violet and Tate’s most tender (and weirdest) moments come when they both share their equal fondness for self-mutilation and fantasizing about how to kill the other teenagers at their school. Dennis O’Hare (True Blood) is at it again with his succulent lunacy. As the burned and disfigured Larry, yet another former owner of the house, his character uses gasoline instead of fangs to kill people this time by burning his wife and two children to death. Rubber Man is a mysterious walking neoprene suit that shows up randomly and has sex with Vivien proving that Latex can be both sexy and scary at the same time. And then there’s Jessica Lange as Constance. Ripping through the scenery with her southern belle maliciousness she is the repository of the long and evil history of the house and is the mother of the aforementioned little girl with Down Syndrome. She percolates while on camera and delivers the episodes best lines. When housekeeper Moira finds her stealing Vivien’s diamond earrings Constance quips with her lilting, yet menacing drawl “Why is it that its always the old whores who acts the part of a moralistic prude.” Tacking on “When anything goes missing they always blame the maid. And don’t make me kill you again.”

Brad Falchuk and Ryan Murphy have crafted a naughty but ingenious show that doesn’t lack subtlety but also delivers on its promise of being both sexy and scary at the same time. With offbeat characters played with joy and just the right amount of inscrutability American Horror Story promises to be a good old-fashioned watch through your fingers fright fest. With copious amounts sweaty undulating flesh and gushing blood thrown in for good measure. This little bit of fright is exactly what we need after True Blood came completely off the rails this past season. FX may provide me with my supernatural fix for the fall.