The American Horror Story Season 9 title has been revealed, and after a politically charged Season 8, it appears the anthology series is heading in a more traditionally “fun” direction. Creator Ryan Murphy released the American Horror Story Season 9 teaser trailer on his Instagram, which opens with footage of a masked killer chasing down a “Final Girl” wearing very 1980s clothes. Indeed, the throwback nature of the footage is intentional, as the title of AHS Season 9 is American Horror Story: 1984.

That title and this teaser seem to suggest the new season of American Horror Story will be taking on 1980s slashers like Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, etc., which sounds like a fun idea! Obviously this is well worn territory, and recent films like The Cabin in the Woods and The Final Girls have put new and meta-textual spins on the seminal decade of the horror genre, so I’m curious to see what Murphy and the AHS team’s angle on this is. Will the season just be one long 1980s-style slasher movie? Will there be a present day frame story? Is this all actually just one big tie-in to the superhero sequel Wonder Woman 1984? When it comes to American Horror Story, all bets are off, so I wouldn’t necessarily rule anything out.

The show has been hit or miss for basically the entirety of its run, as Murphy and Co. reinvent the wheel so to speak with each season, introducing a new premise, setting, and characters while some cast crosses over. The show has tackled horror premises like haunted houses, carnivals, witches, vampires, and even found footage to mixed results, so again it’ll be interesting to see what the angle here is.

I will say, it’s refreshing to see the series heading into potentially more campy territory after the last two seasons were extremely politically charged. Apocalypse was the long-awaited crossover between Coven and Murder House, but ultimately the season spent too much time on characters we didn’t really care about, and I felt it fell pretty flat in the finale.

But as is the nature of American Horror Story, each season is a clean slate, and I’ll probably be checking American Horror Story: 1984 out. Take a look at the teaser trailer below. The series returns on FX this fall.

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