As if the world needed more poorly executed horror slop, American Horror Story honcho Ryan Murphy has a spinoff called American Horror Stories in the works for FX. 

Unlike the original anthology season, which jumped the shark near immediately with hammy performances and wayward storylines, American Horror Stories is set to be 16 one-hour standalone episodes.

Hooray?

Obviously, whether one still enjoys American Horror Story is subjective. Simply because I believe the show stopped being any sort of entertaining around the time The Commish was cast as a rather unremarkable, yet too complex character who balanced his sexuality with violence and a few other tropes best not used as moments to “shock.”

With House Hill and Bly Manor (Netflix) recently taking the anthology route, but doing so far better, it’s essentially the franchise Ryan Murphy likely wanted to build, but failed to for whatever reason. Mike Flanagan, the new it director in horror, combines solid storytelling premises with even better scares; though Bly Manor was clearly less terrifying than Hill House.

It does Help Flanagan that he has source material to work from. Both of his Netflix projects are adaptions of written work, as Ryan Murphy and company are attempting to create original horror all by their lonesome. It’s honestly admirable, even if it feels like the entire AHS foundation isn’t actually rooted in horror, but instead soap-opera shock and awe tacts.

In one man’s opinion (and, subjective!), after the first season of AHS brought actual terror with good pacing, it’s been a race with each new season to get to the twist — and now there’s about 50 per story — as quickly as possible.

American Horror Stories Is?

As mentioned earlier, it’s allegedly 16 one-hour standalone episodes and stories. Knowing Ryan Murphy, as well as the American Horror Story franchise, there’s surely to be some crossover in content and some Easter Eggs along the way; although it’s up to you to decide if that’s a good or bad thing.