American Horror Story - Pilot, S01E01

I slept with the light on after watching this pilot.

American Horror Story is creepy. You spend half of it in suspense, and the other half covering your eyes. And all you know is that there is something very very wrong with that house, but who can say what it is. Frankly, I want to know, but I'm not sure I really want to find out.

The show certainly does its job of freaking its viewers out, and the only concern I have for it is how it will maintain that. Do I really want to subject myself to terror every week? Can I stand not knowing what is going on, what might happen next from week to week? Can they keep up the fear I feel, and do I really want them to? These are factors we will have to examine over the next few episodes.

What I do like is how original it feels. Sure, the concept is standard - wounded family moves into new house to start over, but the house is evil and haunted. It's been done many times before.
But it's still different. What is with that maid? The women see her as an old hag, but Ben (Dylan McDermott) sees one hot redhead who is bent on seducing him. And the neighbour, Constance (Jessica Lange), threatened to kill her again? What exactly did that mean?

What part in the horror going on in that house does Constance play? Is she a ghost too, or something worse? And Tate (Evan Peters) is equally baffling. How did he end up as Ben's patient if he's not real? Or is the house just messing with some poor unbalanced kid?

And so we wait and watch and discover new things, all the while leaving our nerves in a raw state of anxiety. But I will go back to the well, as long as the storytelling remains as fantastic. I will stick with it, even though it frightens me.