Time and again, Ryan Murphy has shown himself adept at exploring the darker sides of human psychology, and both Ratched and American Horror Story show this power at work. In both of these series, the audience gets to experience the thrill and terror of America, whether that be in the confines of an asylum or at a summer camp.
Though they are obviously very different, in some ways they are also very similar, in that they force audiences to look at the villain’s point of view. These two series are certainly in a tight race for which one is more frightening, and each of them has some pretty strong points in their favor.
RATCHED: It's More Realistic
Part of what makes Ratched such a frightening series is that it’s quite realistic. Obviously, it leans very much in Murphy’s direction, with its bright lighting, elegant staging, and bright colors.
Beneath that, though, one can’t escape the feeling that one is literally being immersed in the unsettling world of postwar psychology, where new cures are being invented all the time, with the patients as guinea pigs to determine how effective they are.
AMERICAN HORROR STORY: There's More Death
Anyone who’s watched even a single season of American Horror Story knows that it really leans heavily into the bodycount. It’s a good rule of thumb to never get too attached to any one character because it’s almost a certainty that most of them won’t be alive by the final moments of the season.
It’s precisely the precariousness of life in this series that makes it so frightening, a reminder of everyone’s collective mortality.
RATCHED: It Makes Evil Human
Nurse Ratched is, of course, synonymous with the image of the nasty nurse. This series, however, really goes very far in helping viewers to understand just where she’s coming from. It’s hard to escape the fact that she is, in some important ways, very evil -- willing to do whatever she thinks is necessary to bolster her own sense of right -- but there’s more to her than that.
She clearly loves very deeply, and it’s these moments of humanity and instances where she reveals her vulnerability that make her show so terrifying. She may be a monster, but she's a human monster at that.
AMERICAN HORROR STORY: It's More Illogical
American Horror Story is one of those shows that doesn’t seem to put a lot of stock into being terribly logical, though it does have some great storylines. Time and again, it throws the rules of plot, and genre conventions/expectations out the window in service of shock and gore. Some suggest that this is bad storytelling, but it seems likely that it’s deliberate.
This is a show, after all, that is all about forcing the audience to confront those aspects of life and culture that are, in effect, horrifying, and one of those is the tyranny of chance. It's also important to point out that some of the most terrifying characters are also immortal, which in itself is pretty frightening.
RATCHED: It Has A Deeper Psychology
Ratched, unlike many Ryan Murphy shows, manages to restrain itself to just eight episodes. This not only works to keep the plot fairly tightly wound -- without all of the divergences that one sees in the likes of American Horror Story -- but it also allows the viewer to spend more time with Mildred.
As a result, there’s a deeper understanding of both her and her murderous foster brother Edmund. Comprehending them, however, is also terrifying in its own way, as it forces everyone to confront the question of what they would do if they had experienced similar trauma.
AMERICAN HORROR STORY: The Asylum Is More Terrifying
Most fans of the American Horror Story franchise are pretty firm in their belief that the second series, Asylum, is by far the best. In large part that’s because the asylum is not only a place for the mentally ill. It’s also an abode for a former Nazi doctor, a demonic spirit, and even aliens (yes, really).
While not all of these pieces always fit together in the best way, as a whole the season manages to get beneath the skin of viewers, terrifying and horrifying and exciting all at once.
RATCHED: It Suggests That There’s No Escape From Trauma
Both Mildred Ratched and her brother Edmund had to endure tremendous violence at the hands of the foster care system. As a result, both bear the scars from their encounters, and this tends to skew and distort everything about their contemporary lives.
While this provides a great deal of their motivation as characters, it also has a rather disturbing corollary: in some important ways, there’s no escape from the traumas of childhood.
AMERICAN HORROR STORY: It Has More Clowns
It’s pretty much a given that any horror show or movie that involves clowns is going to be terrifying, and American Horror Story has them in spades.
As if clowns weren’t scary enough, in this series they regularly terrorize and murder people across multiple episodes and seasons. It’s pretty clear that in this one regard, the longer-running horror anthology has the edge when it comes to scaring its audience and making them afraid to go to the circus.
RATCHED: It Shows The Banality Of Monstrosity
A lot of people, whether consciously or unconsciously, think of murderers as monsters, entities that are no longer human but instead something else. It would have been very easy for Ratched to go that route but instead, it shows the ways in which monsters don’t start out that way.
In fact, they're generally just people trying to make the most out of their lives, when something intervenes to utterly change them for the worse. While this is most obviously true of Edmund, it is also true of Mildred herself.
AMERICAN HORROR STORY: It Exposes The Dark Side Of American History
Even though it’s primary purpose is horrifying and scaring its audience by recontextualizing otherwise familiar horror tropes and clichés, there’s also another aspect of American Horror Story. In almost every season, there’s a sense that it wants to excavate the darker side of national history, exposing audiences to the various aspects of the American story that most people would rather remain hidden.
The blood and death is obviously scary enough, but the true horror is the recognition of how much of the atrocities onscreen have been a part of the American reality that's always been there from the beginning and, frighteningly, the future as well.
