Ryan Murphy’s New Crime Thriller ‘The Shards’ Is ‘American Horror Story’ Meets ‘The Breakfast Club’

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 the 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 producer Jordan Roth becomes a key part of the show’s comedic chemistry as Steven, Debbie’s family’s put-upon assistant. Wes Bentley, sporting a thoroughly awful era-appropriate perm, makes Terry, Debbie’s predatory movie producer dad, appropriately unpleasant, thoughtless, and smarmy, but he never quite taps into the character’s deep menace, whose money has insulated him from consequences so thoroughly that he’s lost touch with his humanity.

While Gerber gets a lot of screentime, we don’t necessarily get much insight into what makes her ice queen character decide that she needs to bust loose, no matter the consequences. However, if the show has a weak link — aside from Murphy and co.’s typical wild tonal swings — it is Homer Gere, veteran of the last season of Euphoria and son of ‘80s sex symbol Richard (Gere’s breakthrough, 1980’s American Gigolo, is name-checked on the show). Gere hardly does a bad job — he portrays Robert as a classic smiling-to-your-face back-stabber, the likes of which you might genuinely find in the halls of any high school. But Robert is supposed to be the black hole that every other character gets sucked into (in the pilot, Bret likens him to a “virus” destined to “destroy the very cellular structure of my friends”).

The character is framed as a manipulator, a symbol of innocence lost, so exploding with eroticism and menace that it’s easy for us to understand why Bret becomes fixated and Susan re-arranges her life for him. That’s a tall order for anyone, but especially someone so young and with only a few credits under their belt. Pop culture signifiers show that Robert is supposed to be an object of unspeakable desire who’s happy to use that power to malevolent ends: he quotes the baddies in A Streetcar Named Desire and Chinatown, and his arrival on screen is soundtracked by the Cars’ “Moving in Stereo,” the song from Phoebe Cates’s infamous pool scene in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. But while Robert’s sexy malevolence drives the plot, it’s not really fully on display.

The show’s production design is also surprisingly restrained; the show uses its ‘80s setting judiciously, never falling into a Stranger Things-style retromania. ‘80s excess, from a visual gag about American Psycho-style haute cuisine to shots of luxury cars and pools that gleam like still-life paintings, is mostly a tool to illustrate how lonely our protagonists are, even with the wealth and power given to them as birthrights.

This is a Ryan Murphy show, so, of course, there are some problematic moments: an unnamed disability is handled with a true minimum of sensitivity, and while the show’s running theme of teenagers being targeted by sexually predatory adults is sometimes handled with depth, care, and thoughtfulness, there are also moments when it’s played for laughs. But really, the most shocking thing about The Shards might be how not shocking it is. A few relatively WTF moments aside, the series is most concerned with what will happen to Bret as he enters an adult world that he’s desperate to participate in but not ready to handle. It never quite reaches the coming-of-age peaks it’s aiming for, but it’s difficult not to get invested in what’s happening to Bret and his friends (even if it isn’t always clear what, exactly, is happening to Bret and his friends). The Shards never gets into the over-the-top emotionality that AHS often uses to paper over its flaws. Instead, the show, like its protagonist, plays its cards close to its chest, and hopes you care enough to lean in and read them.

The Shards premieres August 5 on FX.

The Shards

A stylish crime thriller that’s surprisingly restrained.

Release Date

August 5, 2026

Directors

Max Minghella, Crystle Roberson Dorsey, Michael Uppendahl, Ryan Murphy

Cast

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  Kaia Gerber

  Susan Reynolds

Pros & Cons

• Excellent performances elevate the material.
• The series puts more focus on emotions, not outrageous violence.
• Plenty of campy fun.

• Some actors feel miscast in their roles.
• The series loses focus late in the season.