Katie Pumpkinhead’s Pumpkin Patch

Before I start this review, I feel like I should preface this by saying, if there was some sort of target audience for this season, I'm well aware that it wasn't me. A desperation for pregnancy and motherhood is not something I will ever understand or relate to, and I, in general, am grossed out by pregnancy and everything that comes with it, so this season was turning my stomach before it even got into anything overtly horrific. Also, like much of the fandom, I was unimpressed with the majority of the casting. However, Kim Kardashian's Siobhan wound up being my favorite character, solely because she had some great lines. But anyway. Delicate is the story of Anna Victoria Alcott, an actress teetering toward washed up, who desperately craves motherhood. She seeks out the help of New York's greatest fertility doctor, Dr. Hill (notably portrayed by Denis O'Hare, who I would watch read the phone book, but I really don't have much to say about his performance in this...

Some of you may have noticed (I'm actually certain that a few people did) that I didn't write my usual episode-by-episode reviews of American Horror Story once the Stories season ended and NYC began.  This past season, for the first time ever, I had no real desire to watch it. I absolutely loathed the Death Valley portion of Double Feature . I will never, ever watch that again unless I, for some reason, need to get myself into a very bad mood. Seeing something like that put out into the world of AHS almost made me want to stop watching entirely...I don't even know if I would have done the Stories season had it not been for Denis O'Hare's involvement in the first episode and the promise of the revival of one of his previous characters.  But I did, and it was perfectly fine for what it was, much better than most of the first season. However, when NYC premiered, all I kept hearing about was how it didn't feel like AHS, and it honestly sounded far too reality-based ...

 I've always enjoyed tales of horror by the lake. Perhaps it's because I grew up near a lake community and found the history of it very interesting. Or maybe it's because sea monsters and the like never get quite as much love as the average vampire, slasher, or ghost.  Regardless, I was excited about this episode. And it premiered on my birthday! (I didn't watch it on that day, as I was off adventuring in Sleepy Hollow and then Halloween shopping, but still. It meant something to me that something AHS-related was happening on my birthday, and this episode really didn't disappoint! Lake introduces us to brother and sister Jake and Finn, hanging out with a group of other teens at their family lake house. Jake is apparently heavy into the history of this lake and wants to go diving to check out if the rumors and damming and the like are true...and also to impress a girl his sister doesn't approve of.  Straight off, I was skeptical about the fact that there was a ch...

 I've been having a hard time even remembering I have to write this review, as this episode left me feeling all sorts of "meh". This is going to be a tough one for me to write about, as I can't even pinpoint exactly what about it didn't work for me, I just know that something about it seemed really off somehow. It was a really good concept, very ambitious and unafraid to "go there", but it just missed a mark for me somehow. It could have been better but I'm sure how to explain how. Anyway, Necro brings us the story of a young mortician named Sam, who really seems to love what she does. The episode opens with a flashback of a toddler Sam watching her mother get murdered, so I'm guessing the obsession with death comes from some unprocessed trauma. Because no one can just find it cool, you know? (I actually thought about trying to get into it at one point in my life, but the big reason I didn't is my ommetaphobia. I'd be like Billy Wilkins f...

 This episode of American Horror Stories is one I absolutely couldn't wait to see. So, naturally, it fell within with a week that real life (and also The Sandman premiere) got in the way and I only got around to watching it at a regrettable hour on Tuesday night. But this episode is one I've been hoping to see in the AHS universe for a long time.  If I had to think about what scared me the most in my childhood, Bloody Mary ranks very, very high on the list. I can remember almost the whole scene of hearing about her for the first time. It was art class, third grade. For some reason, some of the kids at my table started talking about ghost stories and scary encounters, and, since I really had no one to talk to, all I could do was listen.  Being an eight-year-old child who was afraid of just about everything at the time, a lot of the stories got to me. I remember one about a disappearing house, and another about a girl who swore she saw scissors hovering by her sister's neck...

 This week, American Horror Stories gave us something we haven't seen yet from the spin-off anthology series (And if I'm honest, something I don't think we see enough of on the main show anymore): A period piece!  Milkmaids begins in the time of smallpox, with a man named Thomas, played by the Patron Saint of Stories  himself, Cody Fern. Thomas's wife has just died of the disease, and evidently so have all of his daughters, leaving him only with a son, Edward. It's a very morbid opening, as Edward asks why none of their friends are coming to the funeral services, and Thomas answers that it's because they're dead. Edward has a lot of morbid questions, honestly. But a creepy kid is far from the most disturbing thing this episode has to offer. We are soon introduced to Celeste, a prostitute who is riddled with boils resembling that associated with smallpox, only she's never been sick. Men don't just come to Celeste for sex, you see. They come to lick th...

 I’m going to start this review by saying, I think this may actually be my personal favorite episode of the Stories franchise so far. And believe me when I tell you, when I saw what the episode was about, I went into it with extremely low expectations.  Last season had a few episodes based more or less on technology-based horrors, and these episodes really weren’t my favorite. The concept got tired after the first few instances of “a video plays and people die”, and it just added to the overall atmosphere of “AHS for a teen audience”. So, when I saw the episode was all about a doorbell camera, I was skeptical. Just about the only thing that made me want to watch this episode was Gabourey Sidibe’s involvement. And I guess I ought to thank her, because this was a great ride! Aura opens up with a commercial for a security camera system/app named, you guessed it, Aura. I have to say, whoever wrote this portion really nailed that feeling of an overacted security system commercial. ...

 In addition to “Code Orange” alerts mentioned in my previous post, there is another spooky summer tradition that started for me last year:  The premiere of the ever-interesting ride that is American Horror Stories , the sorta-spinoff anthology series to my favorite TV show, American Horror Story.  I started reviewing Stories here last year, and if you read those reviews, you probably recall my mixed feelings on the episodes. In hindsight there was really only one episode that truly stood out to me and made the series worth the price of admission, and I actually did briefly contemplate not watching this season after 90% of the last one failed to deliver, but a) I’m probably more likely to saw an arm off my body than I am to ever truly quit anything AHS-related (unless they keep up the alien BS) and b) as soon as I found out Denis O’Hare would be involved, I immediately changed my tune. My only career goal that doesn’t involve the Halloween industry in some way is “Denis O...