# AHS: Hotel

Canonical: https://planetofthecapes.co.uk/television/ahs-hotel/
Entity type: review
Last modified: 2026-10-21T12:56:16+00:00
Content type: television
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## Description

American Horror Story has never been known for restraint, but Hotel looks at the rest of the anthology and apparently decides everyone has been behaving far too sensibly. The Hotel Cortez gives the season one location in which ghosts, murderers, addicts, vampires, fashion victims and assorted Ryan Murphy regulars can keep bumping into each other without anybody needing a particularly convincing reason to leave. That building is the hook. The Cortez looks expensive, seductive and deeply unsafe. Long corridors disappear into darkness, rooms seem capable of holding decades of bad decisions and the Art Deco glamour never quite hides the fact that an extraordinary number of people have died here. The obvious inspiration is the Cecil Hotel, but AHS is not trying to recreate a real building or its history. The Cortez becomes its own ridiculous place, designed by James Patrick March as though somebody asked a serial killer to combine a luxury hotel with a murder puzzle. Evan Peters clearly enjoys the opportunity. His March is theatrical even by American Horror Story standards, complete with an accent that seems to have arrived from another decade and absolutely no interest in toning himself down. He works because Hotel gives him a world large enough to contain the performance. Devil's Night is probably the purest example. March gathers dead serial killers around a dinner table for an annual celebration, which sounds like the sort of idea somebody should have rejected somewhere between the writers' room and filming. Instead it becomes one of the season's most memorable episodes. Hotel can get away with that level of excess because by then it has already taught us that normal rules have checked out. The Cortez belongs to its residents - Lady Gaga's Countess was the casting everyone talked about, and understandably so. She fits Hotel almost immediately. The Countess does not enter rooms so much as occupy them. Clothes, lighting and music all seem to reorganise themselves around her, which makes the character feel completely at home in a season obsessed with beauty, appetite and people refusing to let go of what they want. The performance works best when Gaga is allowed to be still. Hotel is already shouting from every wall, so the Countess rarely needs to. Her history with the building, Donovan and Ramona Royale gradually adds more to her than the initial image of an impossibly glamorous predator. Sarah Paulson has considerably less glamour as Sally, and that is precisely why she stands out. Sally is damaged, needy, manipulative and trapped inside the Cortez along with the consequences of her own life. Paulson makes her unpleasant without making her disposable. In a hotel crowded with people who died badly, Sally still feels particularly stuck. Kathy Bates provides a very different sort of presence as Iris. Put her behind the reception desk and she looks as though she has already heard every complaint a guest could possibly make, including the ones involving blood leaking through the ceiling. Iris begins as somebody almost consumed by Donovan, but gradually becomes much more entertaining when she develops interests and loyalties of her own. Denis O'Hare's Liz Taylor is one of Hotel's real successes. A character who could easily have been treated as another piece of Cortez decoration becomes the emotional centre of large sections of the season. Liz's story is about finally getting to live as herself, but Hotel wisely allows her to be funny, angry, stylish, stubborn and occasionally ridiculous along the way. She feels like a person rather than a message waiting to be delivered. Angela Bassett is also exactly where she ought to be as Ramona Royale. She brings old Hollywood confidence to a revenge story that could otherwise disappear beneath the season's mountain of subplots. And there are a lot of subplots. That is where Hotel can test the patience. John Lowe's investigation, the Ten Commandments Killer, the Countess, the vampire children, Sally, Donovan, Ramona, Liz, Iris, March and the hotel's col

## Image

https://planetofthecapes.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/jOO6bG2hYlipyk2O2p8fsjWeCCn.jpg

## Short Description

Check in to the infamous Hotel Cortez, where velvet‑lined hallways hide bloody secrets and stylish horrors never sleep. Lady Gaga commands the night, Sarah Paulson unravels in manic splendour, and Evan Peters hosts the most unholy dinner party on TV. This is AHS at its haunted best.

## Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLJR2twdK00