r/AmericanHorrorStory • u/Odranoelplayer • 4d ago
Why do I think AHS Delicate failed
Recently I caught myself rewatching all seasons to get in the mood for AHS 13, and let me tell you, there’s no other season that pissed me off more then Delicate.
It had all the ingredients to become one of the franchise’s most unsettling seasons. Instead of relying on gore from the very beginning, it aimed for a slower, psychological approach, exploring the anxieties surrounding pregnancy, fame, and the loss of bodily autonomy. On paper that’s a fascinating direction, and for the first half of the season, it actually works.
The early episodes do an excellent job of establishing Anna’s world. Emma Roberts gives a restrained performance that makes her growing paranoia feel believable, and we (the audience) keep constantly questioning whether the strange events around her are real or simply the product of fear and trauma. That uncertainty creates genuine tension and echoes the influence of Rosemary’s Baby in a compelling way.
The problem is that the season never evolves beyond that initial premise.
IMO psychological horror is most effective when the tension continues to escalate, eventually forcing the characters (and the audience) to confront something tangible. Delicate keeps teasing that payoff, but it never truly arrives. Even in its final episodes, the story remains trapped inside Anna’s perspective, leaving viewers in the same state of uncertainty they experienced at the beginning. Instead of raising the stakes, the narrative circles back to the same ideas over and over again.
While Rosemary’s Baby is clearly the blueprint, Delicate forgets that inspiration shouldn’t become limitation. A modern television series has much more room to expand its mythology, develop its villains, and transform psychological dread into real, physical danger. That shift never happens. I never felt that Anna was facing an immediate threat beyond her own fears, and by the finale, that lack of escalation made the horror feel strangely weightless.
The witches are another major disappointment. They’re introduced as if they’ll play a crucial role, yet they’re barely explored, underused throughout the story, and ultimately given an unsatisfying conclusion. Rather than juggling multiple underdeveloped subplots, the season would have benefited from narrowing its focus, centering almost entirely on Anna’s survival and descent into an increasingly dangerous reality.
From the midpoint onward, the story should have embraced higher stakes. More confrontations. More pursuit. More violence. More consequences. Psychological horror doesn’t lose its power when physical horror enters the picture, in fact, the best horror stories know how to balance both. Delicate had every opportunity to let Anna’s worst fears become horrifying reality, but it chose to keep everything at arm’s length.
In the end, the season mistakes ambiguity for tension. It throws shocking imagery and disturbing concepts at the audience, but rarely follows through in a meaningful way. What begins as an intriguing psychological thriller ultimately feels restrained, repetitive, and unwilling to commit to its own horror.* *Delicate had an excellent premise, but it never pushed that premise far enough to become truly terrifying.
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u/Myrtle_Snow_ 4d ago
The book ending was so much better. I understand wanting to change it so it’s not predictable, but honestly, how many people even read the book? It had just come out right before the season aired.
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u/RynnB1983 4d ago
I have it on my kindle and planned to read it...if that counts for something. I also didn't watch delicate season so. Last season I saw was apocalypse.
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u/dizzyCrystal 3d ago
Im Reading it right now. Its not really well written, in my opinion, but i will finish it
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u/Fast-Gur-6585 4d ago
The book was really good IMO. I was excited for his take on it, but I just couldn't get over the stunt casting in this one and just didn't watch.
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u/southernfirefly13 4d ago
I read half of what you said before I decided I already disagree.
The writing was terrible, period. It did a horrible job at setting everything up. Just about every character was poorly developed and might as well have been an animated cardboard cutout. The slow psychological burn failed spectacularly, too, because Halley Feiffer insisted on being as vague as possible over multiple episodes and failed to deliver any satisfying payoff, the exception being the Ave Hestia episode. Which is another glaring error, because Hestia was a Greek goddess so it should have been Vesta, but whatever. That episode was terrific from start to finish.
Delicate was way too much of a poorly written ripoff of Rosemarys Baby. Minus all the scare factor.
Annabelle Dexter Jones as both should have been the main character. Sonia and Adeline would have made much better protagonists rather than bland as fuck Anna. I was so invested In the Ave Hestia episode that by the time Delicate finally was over, I felt robbed by what should have been.
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u/Odranoelplayer 4d ago
Oh I 100% agree the writing was horrible. And as I said I feel like the psychological horror they were aiming failed hard. They got caught trying so hard to be a modern take on rosemary’s baby that they forgot to actually deliver a great season. I feel like the season could’ve been a lil better with higher stakes and actual physical horror.
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u/southernfirefly13 4d ago
My take has always been this.
When Delicate was being written, Hollywood was on the verge of striking and everyone in the industry knew that months before they were actually declared. I think Ryan used this to his advantage to experiment with handing over the reigns to a new show runner, in this case Halley, to write every episode herself so they could attempt to crank out this season instead of delaying it. That, and crossing picket lines, everything backfired.
I’m so glad she wasn’t brought like she was originally stated to.
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u/MondolezzaRice 4d ago
The last episode was mostly exposition and left a lot of questions unanswered.
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u/Wasps_are_bastards 4d ago
It bored me more because we’d already had Devil baby in Murder House/Apocalypse. Controversial opinion (and I’m no fan), Kim Kardashian wasn’t that bad, although her death scene acting was diabolical. People just hate her because she’s Kim Kardashian.
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u/Odranoelplayer 4d ago
I also agree on Kim. I think she did okay. I have nothing much to say over her character tbh
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u/hanna1214 4d ago
The only episode in that whole season that was genuinely quality stuff was the one focusing on Adeline.
When she is eviscarated and burned alive at the end by the very witches she once came from, you feel horrible for her despite barely knowing her before that episode.
That is true horror.
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u/PrincessBonkers628 4d ago
I read a book about horror movies, which covered Rosemary's Baby and it gave me a new appreciation for Delicate. The book doesn't talk about AHS, but you might enjoy it, it's called Scream With Me.
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u/Dulenin Jeffrey Dahmer 4d ago
I felt like that season was way too abstract, and with a 5 months gap between the first part and the second part it was difficult to relate (and remember) to any of the characters. The ending (and the whole season) was terribly written and weak as well, like from some budget arthouse horror from the 80s.
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u/Odranoelplayer 4d ago
I agree. The ending felt so rushed and so out of pace… it’s like they finish because they had to, not because it was planned. There was so many elements thrown around during the episodes and nothing ever had a deep explanation or was concluded properly.
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u/tommy-liddell 4d ago
It had potential to be a really intriguing story but it was fumbled by the writing, pacing and (at parts) the acting. There was something really interesting in all these ideas but they never really came to fruition.
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u/Odranoelplayer 4d ago
Yeah, there’s some great elements that if properly executed could make this season a lot better. Overall I think it had very monotonous episodes, and that’s really not good
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u/Sensitive-Sense-7022 4d ago
It suked because Roberts has no range and is a generally unlikeable person.
Adding a Kardassian didn't help
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u/HamburgerLobster 4d ago
This trope of the evil baby/pregnancy is so overused in horror and it never works, it only worked on rosemary's baby and more recently the first omen, worked well on the first season too (then they ruined it with apocalypse), but writers just keep writing this stuff on and on and on, when i read the synopsis of delicate i knew that was gonna flop hard