PopHorror Let's Get Scared
Conjecture and theories regarding the theme of American Horror Story Season 6 abound, but series co-creator Ryan Murphy remains frustratingly mum. One detail he let slip at this week’s PaleyFest event for American Horror Story: Hotel, the show’s 5th Chapter, is that “elements of children” will feature prominently.
“If you look at horror tropes, the innocence of children, that sort of wide-eyed entryway into some world is always very dramatic and satisfying,”
Murphy also promises that the links connecting previous seasons of AHS will become more obvious, perhaps indicating that The Countess’s mini-minions from last season’s Hotel may be returning to haunt our dreams! Lady Gaga, who plays The Countess, is confirmed to be returning, along with fellow AHS alum: Sarah Paulson, Kathy Bates, Denis O’Hare, Angela Bassett, Matt Bomer, Wes Bentley, Cheyenne Jackson, and Finn Wittrock.
Children have been a common trope since the beginning of horror literature and cinema, from the young charges in Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw (1898) to the Children of the Corn film franchise (which began in 1984 are endures to this day). Something about subverting the inherent innocence of youth is absolutely terrifying!
For many, creepy kids represent a manifestation of parental anxieties: Fear of raising a monster, fear of being destroyed by a life you created, or fear of losing your child to the evil influences of the outside world, for example. There’s also the idea that children are somehow more tuned in to paranormal energies than adults, or even that they’re conduits for supernatural activities. Children certainly seem prone to demonic possessions and poltergeist phenomenon (at least in movies and on TV).
Whether Ryan plans to stoke these particular anxieties or take his creepy kids in an entirely different direction remains to be seen. At the moment, he admits to working on two distinct ideas for Season 6, so there’s no telling what theme will emerge as the most prominent. This is unlikely to stop rampant fan speculation, however—not by a long shot!
The 6th Season of American Horror Story will premiere on FX sometime in 2016.
