Spoilers ahead!

American Horror Story: Hotel may be my favourite series so far! The characters were compelling and had amazing story arcs and development, the actual story was really interesting and all the minor storylines really added something else to the main story.

Throughout this series the audience follows many different characters and their relationship with the hotel. From Mr March who was the man who built the hotel in the 20s to the Countess who prays on hotel visitors for their blood. Vampires, ghosts, sadistic killers and the fashion industry all show up within this story.

What I loved about this series was the common throwbacks to older series’ and series’ characters as well as real people/killers that have existed in real life. The episode ‘Devil’s Night’ is where we meet a bunch of killers that are real life killers who are now ghosts and meet at the hotel Cortez to kill again even in the afterlife. These killers include the Zodiac Killer, Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy (all very interesting in awful ways so wikipedia them if you don’t know who they are!). The inclusion of real life serial killers adds to the realism of the story and definitely keeps the audience entertained and intrigued.

Vampires and ghosts are an interesting story arc due to the fact that, in real life, they are most likely not real. Vampires most definitely but ghosts – well that can be disputed. Learning the vampires’ extended lives and how they were shaped into the person we see on screen is incredibly interesting and the same can be said for how the ghosts would have died and how they transition into the afterlife.

One storyline that is incredibly interesting is Detective John Lowe who starts as a cop researching a murder case where, the victims seem to be showing off one of the deadly sins, and he slowly transitions, with the audience’s realisation, that he is the killer himself. Seeing his descent into madness as well as his wife’s disconnection from him after the loss of their son and the ghost of Sally pulling him in to adultery the whole story around this one character is interesting enough but having all the other characters makes it even more exciting and inviting.

One of my favourite characters has to be Liz who was born a man but transitioned into a woman thanks to the Countess’ help. Liz is treated like any other female character which is so refreshing to see as no one even calls it up – she is just treated like any other human being. Her storyline is so interesting and she is just a loveable, wonderful character with a lot of sass!

One thing that’s different from the other series’ is the added characters from other series’ in this one. As this series is set in present day as well as Murder House and Coven this meant that crossovers could happen easily. In one episode the voodoo doll girl from Coven makes an appearance and in the very last episode the psychic from Murder House shows up and is a very prominent character for that episode. Even though all the characters are played by the same actors in each series, this could seem a bit odd but actually works so well and makes it nice to know that all these stories happen in the same universe.

If you haven’t watched AHS I urge you to watch it in order of series as cutting between them can get very confusing (I learnt this the hard way) but I definitely recommend Hotel if you only want to watch one series because it is just so interesting!

What did you think of Hotel?

Until next time.

Published by shonaharding

Media graduate with a passion for reviewing film and TV. View all posts by shonaharding