• Network: FX
  • Series Premiere Date: Oct 5, 2011
  • Season #: 1 , 2
American Horror Story Image
Metascore

Generally favorable reviews - based on 23 Critics What's this?

User Score

Generally favorable reviews- based on 123 Ratings

  • Summary: Season two of the horror series begins with newlyweds Leo and Teresa stopping at Briarcliff Manor, an abandoned Catholic sanitarium. In the 1960s, Sister Jude (Jessica Lange) and Dr. Oliver Thredson (Zachary Quinto) had opposing ideas about treatment for the inmates who lived there.
  • Genre(s): Horror
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 16 out of 23
  2. Negative: 2 out of 23
  1. Reviewed by: James Poniewozik
    Oct 17, 2012
    80
    So far it works.... Asylum feels like a more focused, if equally frenetic, screamfest. It's also gorgeously realized.
  2. Reviewed by: Matt Roush
    Oct 17, 2012
    80
    Asylum delivers a much more evocative nightmare gallery without losing any of the franchise's provocative, look-ma-I'm-screaming bravado.
  3. Reviewed by: Chris Conaton
    Oct 17, 2012
    60
    American Horror Story: Asylum reintroduces the first season's nightmarish craziness but also sets it within a coherent basic history. It helps too that the new cast appears to be so tight.
  4. Reviewed by: Linda Stasi
    Oct 17, 2012
    38
    If Freddy Krueger married Regan from "The Exorcist," and they moved to "Shutter Island" with "Agnes of God" on "Friday the 13th," they'd all end up in this Asylum.

See all 23 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 24 out of 30
  2. Negative: 2 out of 30
  1. If you thought that season one of this show was crazy, this season is bat**** crazy. The writers seem to be throwing all kinds of **** at the ceiling and seeing if any of it sticks. Collapse
  2. American Horror Story: Asylum. I've been waiting for a long time to watch this show. Pilot was a little unusual, but it was likeable. I loved Jessica Lange's performance and the entire production desgin of the asylum is just fabulous. Looking forward to upcoming episodes, this show can do better. Expand
  3. There were moments in the episode where I didn't quite get it: the opening scene with the couple breaking into the Asylum seemed pointless, and the alien invasion scene, which to me didn't quite fit the story. Besides that I thought the episode stayed true to what 'American Horror Story' is, a fun, campy, and unusual series that you can't help but watch. Expand
  4. 0
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. I absolutely loved the first Season it was good horror show for those who appreciate horror. Season 2 the Asylum begun as hardcore horror it was visceral, grotesque, traumatic and definitely not for the squeamish. I was quite sickened at times through its approach to horror, although this is what good horror should do, make the viewer horrified and cringe. As this season dragged on and on. It became more and more repetitive becoming implausible, almost as insane as the inmates themselves. Drawing the viewer into absolute boredom away from all the starting shock treatment they had received from its first episodes. Upon the episodes leading to the final and finale I am absolutely disgusted at the way this series has robbed my time going for trauma to utter crap. The final was in the effect of happily ever after, and never never land. I was no longer no horrified but enraged. Everything in its ending was drawn up to a neat close no loose ends in a ditched effort to appease audiences who never where its fans. What should have been a hardcore ending was some wimpy kid dying in his mother arms from the **** killing him. Seriously, CMON now? They could have done something horrific in the effect of. Lange that evil nun granny, being found in a pile of feces murmuring her last words to the reporter from her leper body as she squawks her finale dying breath with death laughing at her. Kit's children were created by aliens, why not have them kill the Cardinal in some apocalyptic way after Kit was abducted. The evil reporter **** should have been killed by BloodyFace 2, no doubt about that. He should have do this in some horrible, visceral way, then ending with him being lead to an asylum. Then it would have completed this seasons circle, or at least dying in a double KO in his mothers arms drinking that milk he never had. Season 3 is coming later this year I have lost all faith in this ****y horror. The french are some of the best at horror they don't hold their punches back, or maybe go read a Ketchum to get a better idea of evil. This Hollywood crap is ridiculous. I can only assume next season will be shot using Blair Witch camera's, using paranormal activity effects, and the hero will be played by a cow ending with moo. They really should write Old MacDonalds farm instead of making a horror series. When it ends in that happily ever after, never never land. The thing I hate the most about this episode is that a lot of **** blogs are praising this episode as it epitomised evil, yea right . The only evil thing it did was anyone who doesn't agree with their weak review doesn't have their say. What an awful series which had some starting promise but then became weaker, and weaker. The only horror was afflicting the viewer with boredom Expand

See all 30 User Reviews

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