Just weeks ahead of its Season 9 premiere, FX has released the first full-length trailer for American Horror Story: 1984. The upcoming season, set to premiere on Sept. 18, centers on a group of twenty-somethings at a summer camp terrorized by a crazed murderer, dubbed Mr. Jingles, a patient who escaped from a nearby psychiatric hospital and who has a tendency to slit throats.
You’re all gonna die. Watch the OFFICIAL TRAILER for #AHS1984. Premieres 9/18 on @FXNetworks. pic.twitter.com/TzH6e08BuV
— AmericanHorrorStory (@AHSFX) August 26, 2019
“I got a gig as a counselor at a summer camp they’re opening up a couple of hours from here, you guys should all come,” Cody Fern’s character says in the clip, setting up the chain of events that will haunt the season.
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“This is the site of the worst summer massacre of all time,” Angelica Ross’ character says in the clip once the group arrives at the camp.
“We’re not in the mood for some ghost story,” Fern’s character interjects.
The trailer’s release comes just a little more than a month after the series unveiled the first look at the cast for the upcoming season, which, along with Fern and Ross, is set to returning actors Billie Lourd, Emma Roberts and Leslie Grossman. DeRon Horton, Matthew Morrison, John Carroll Lynch, Zach Villa and Gus Kenworthy.
Notably missing from the cast is creator Ryan Murphy’s muse Sarah Paulson. Paulson, who has starred in every other season of the horror anthology series since its inception, oftentimes taking on multiple roles at once, was confirmed not to be returning for 1984 by several sources.
Her co-star, Evan Peters, will also not return. Like Paulson, Peters has starred since Season 1 and has portrayed multiple roles in single seasons. He announced that he would not appear in 1984 in April, stating that he was instead choosing to “sit a season out.”
Speaking to The Wrap, FX Networks and FX Productions CEO John Landgraf suggested that the reason for their absence was due to the enormity of the Season 8.
“Remember, he did something really interesting, which is he decided to weave multiple different cycles through the eighth season, and so it was the biggest cast ever,” Landgraf said. “You had actors that were playing 2-3 different characters. You had to bring back all the cast from prior seasons. It was a monster in terms of the size of the cast, cost of that cast. You can’t do that all the time.”
Billy Eichner, who joined the cast of American Horror Story for the FX anthology’s seventh installment in 2017 and also starred in Season, also confirmed that he will not be appearing in the upcoming season, which is set to pay homage to slasher films of the 1980s, particularly the summer camp-set Friday the 13th.
The theme for the season was revealed in April of this year. It follows on the heels of Apocalypse, a crossover season of Season 1’s Murder House and Season 3’s Coven.
American Horror Story: 1984 will premiere Wednesday, September 18 at 9 p.m. ET on FX.
