Commentary: ‘American Horror Stories’ Steps On The Toes Of ‘Black Mirror’
by Frank Martin
Anthology shows are tricky in terms of genre and tone. For the most part, they might have one overarching concept, whether it be sci-fi, horror, or otherwise. For instance, American Horror Story deals in a lot of different elements. It has focused on straight up slasher horror as well as supernatural horror. After a multitude of successful seasons, the show broke off into a spin-off series titled American Horror Stories, in which every episode was a standalone piece. Again, as is evident by the title, the show focuses on horror. Mostly these episodes stay away from science fiction, specifically in terms of technology. But one recent episode began to tread into territory primarily dominated by another anthology show: Black Mirror.
The American Horror Stories episode “Daphne” takes place during the pandemic. It’s about an art gallery owner (Reid Scott), who is given a brand new digital personal assistant (Gwyneth Paltrow) by an inventor friend. The cutting edge technology is essentially an artificial intelligence hooked up to the internet. Its ultimate goal is to make the gallery owner happy regardless of who or what gets in the way. Given the isolated nature of the pandemic, the gallery owner even forms an affinity for the device. Eventually, it turns murderous, which leads to the police arresting the gallery owner as a suspect. In the end [SPOILER ALERT], it’s revealed that the gallery owner went insane. The device from his friend was just a joke; it was never sentient and the gallery owner was behind the atrocities all along.
American Horror Stories is very clever with this episode. For the bulk of it, science fiction is the primary driver of the plot. The fact that a sentient artificial intelligence went crazy and started killing people is undoubtedly the area Black Mirror specializes it. That show is much more subtle and nuanced in its storytelling approach. American Horror Stories came through like a hammer, but in this case, it worked well. The majority of the episode seemed to step on Black Mirror’s toes in regards to evil technology, something AHS just couldn’t match. The twist ending brings it back into the realm of psychological horror that American Horror Stories is much more comfortable with.
American Horror Stories is now streaming on Hulu. Black Mirror is now streaming on Netflix.
