It’s tough to believe there’d be a Ryan Murphy without Bret Easton Ellis. Long before the uber-producer was putting out a steady stream of shows designed to push the limits of good taste, Ellis was doing the same in the literary world. A wunderkind whose edgy debut novel, Less Than Zero, was published when he was just 21 years old, Ellis eventually became interested in pushing boundaries — most notably with American Psycho, his famously gruesome horror novel (and inspiration for the 2000 Christian Bale film) that had its initial release cancelled by its publisher. In the decades since, Ellis has produced work of varying success and quality — including The Shards, his bestselling 2023 semi-autobiographical novel that put him back in the spotlight — but the throughline has always been his passion for transgression, even when it doesn’t quite make sense for the story. Sound like anyone else you know?

Before he achieved pop culture visibility as the creator of the whimsical sitcom Glee, Murphy had already begun playing with taboos with Nip/Tuck, his frequently graphic 2003 series about a pair of horny, dysfunctional plastic surgeons. Murphy’s love for controversy only fully blossomed with the show that made him a household name: American Horror Story. His horror anthology series, about to debut its thirteenth season, has been on the air since 2011, and has been dogged by public outcry almost non-stop since, regarding everything from the show’s insensitive take on disability to its graphic depictions of every type of violence. Sometimes, Murphy pushes the envelope in service of unique and emotionally resonant storytelling, as in the case of his Emmy-nominated 2024 Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story. Other times, boundaries seem to be broken for their own sake (insert your own favorite AHS unearned gross-out moment here).

So it’s a surprise that, now that Murphy and Ellis have finally collaborated, the result is a bit… restrained. Though the idea of the two provocateurs joining forces likely sent a chill down the spines of network censors, The Shards is a stylish crime thriller that’s far more interested in the horror of growing up than blood and guts (though, make no mistake, there’s some blood and guts). Think of it, perhaps, as American Horror Story: The Breakfast Club. While it struggles to cohere at times, many of its individual parts are as enjoyable as the crowd-pleasing retro needle drops that fill the soundtrack.

‘The Shards’ Combines Emotional Torture With… Well, Real Torture

At its heart, The Shards tells an old story: a group of friends finds their cozy world torn apart by a handsome stranger with hidden motives. This group just happens to be a clique of wealthy Los Angeles teens in 1981 — one of whom is Bret Ellis (Fall of the House of Usher’s Igby Rigney), an aspiring writer living a double life. At school, he’s the boyfriend of popular bad girl Debbie (Hayes Warner), and best friend to tightly-wound class president Susan (AHS alum Kaia Gerber) and dim-witted jock Thom (Graham Campbell). But by night, he’s secretly hooking up with Ryan, an athlete with a Duran Duran dye job (Daniel Dale), and school stoner Matt (Wednesday’s Owen Painter), about whom Bret feels complicated emotions that are forbidden in upper-crust 1981 California. The stress of balancing these two existences makes Bret so tense, he often looks like a rubber band about to pop, with a desperate-to-appear-relaxed smile-cum-grimace that might not be fooling anyone.

Into this situation walks Robert Montgomery (Homer Gere), a leather pants-clad transfer student whose arrival coincides with a series of mysterious serial killings around the city. Bret both lusts after Robert and is convinced that he’s bad news, while Susan is so overpowered with desire that she helps Robert become popular, despite her long relationship with Thom. Soon, it’s clear that Bret isn’t the only person in his orbit with a secret, and as classmates begin to go missing, The Shards occupies itself with questions that go far beyond discerning the murderer’s identity — it wants to talk about innocence and experience, the loneliness of growing up, and the divide between our public and private selves. They’re heady questions for a show that also features a Silence of the Lambs-style basement torture dungeon and at least one decapitated head. But The Shards is at its best when it’s juggling these elements simultaneously: probing the nature of identity and the agony of adolescence while also indulging in the gleefully deranged camp-horror that Murphy is known for.

The Cast’s Vulnerable Performances Balance ‘The Shards’ Excesses

“We are nice people,” Gerber’s Susan announces in the pilot, a statement that the rest of the series dedicates itself to disproving — not because the kids are catty stock characters found in any teen movie, but because in the world of The Shards, adolescence is a nightmare that turns “good kids” into paranoid, conniving liars, loose cannons, or, perhaps, murderers. This transformation starts slowly — the series begins with a quiet pair of episodes, co-written by Ellis and Murphy, that set up the ‘80s Eden that Robert is here to destroy. They also establish Bret’s premature-seeming suspicion, which seems just as fueled by his worry that Robert might have sussed out his secret as it is by any actual belief that the transfer student is dangerous.

By The Shards‘ midway point, the series comes alive, playing with dark comedy in a way that evokes the best of AHS. Episodes set at a house party, a homecoming rally, and a Hairspray-style teen dance TV show respectively descend into entertaining pandemonium, subverting ‘80s teen clichés with venom and moments of surprising insight. Characters, especially Campbell’s Thom, grow in new and unexpected ways. However,the show does lose its way a bit in the final stretch as it moves towards the presumed unmasking of the killer, with abrupt changes in character motivations and new distracting plotlines that feel a bit like a kid scrambling to do some homework they forgot about.

Throughout the series,the cast turns in fine work, especially Rigney, who was a standout in Mike Flanagan‘s adaptation of The Midnight Club. His tightly wound Bret is the show’s greatest asset; he communicates emotions that Bret tries to repress through eyes that often seem on the verge of tears and a body that’s nearly vibrating with tension whether he’s trying to solve a murder or just convince Debbie that he’s happy to be with her. His deadpan delivery of bon mots and vulnerable revelations alike gives the series all its brightest moments. Boy-next-door Thom goes through a character transformation that could have seemed absurd but Campbell makes it feel not only natural but inevitable. Similarly Warner digs surprisingly deep into Debbie turning what could have been a one-note party girl into a young woman deeply damaged by her self-absorbed parents.

Speaking of those self-absorbed parents,Evan Rachel Wood has a glorious time as Debbie’s miserable mother Liz in an over-the-top camp performance that will surely launch a thousand screengrabs. After a quiet start Broadway producerJordan Roth b ecomes key part of show’s comedic chemistry as Steven Debbie’s family’s put-upon assistant. Wes Bentley , sporting thoroughly awful era-appropriate perm makes Terry Debbie’s predatory movie producer dad appropriately unpleasant thoughtless smarmy but never quite taps into character’s deep menace whose money has insulated him from consequences so thoroughly that he’s lost touch with his humanity.

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