Stream It Or Skip It: ‘American Horror Stories’ Season 3 On FX/Hulu, With 5 New Stories Designed To Creep You Out During Halloween 2024

It’s become an annual tradition for FX and Hulu to celebrate “Huluween” by releasing a new batch of American Horror Stories episodes, the anthology series created by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk that tells stories in the creepy and bloody fashion that their series American Horror Story has been doing since 2011. As most anthologies go, the results are a bit uneven, but this new batch of episodes start with one that makes us think this group might be among the series’ best.

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Opening Shot: In a modern house, we see a man on his laptop, working on a screenplay.

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The Gist: Daniel Hausman-Burger (Michael Imperioli) is an award-winning screenwriter, but has been in seclusion since his 10-year-old son Roman (Matthew Eby) disappeared. His manager, Aaron (David Pittu) comes by the house to try to sus out where Daniel is emotionally, and Daniel tells him that Roman’s disappearance has been so numbing to him that the only way he can interact with the real world is by working on his current screenplay.

But then Daniel goes through a door and finds himself in an empty, brightly-lit supermarket. As the lights flicker and the PA system blasts chirpy announcements, he sees a kid who sounds like Roman but is wearing a weird mask. Suddenly, the masked child goes into a back room and blood seeps out from the bottom of the door. Then Daniel finds himself suddenly back at his house.

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Sometime later, he gets a call from Aaron; he meets his ex-wife Riva (Natalie Gold) and Aaron at a restaurant; Riva tells him the bad news that Roman’s body has been found. He was found the previous week, but for some reason no one could get in touch with Daniel. As Daniel goes through a door to get some air, he finds himself in a dingy hallway, with holes in the wall that he climbs through, and masked people chasing him through ever-narrowing passages. Then he’s back at his house.

Daniel wonders how this scary, otherworldly but very real-seeming world is. He finds a YouTube video from a man named Eli (Matthew Maher) who has experienced a liminal space like this, one that looks mundane but feels like it’s between the living world and the “other side”, whatever that may mean. Daniel emails Eli, saying he wants to talk, and the two of them meet — in the visiting room of a penitentiary, where Eli is currently serving a sentence that has a lot to do with why he experienced those liminal spaces to begin with.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? As we said when Season 3 started a year ago, American Horror Stories are essentially more compressed, but just as bloody, versions of American Horror Story seasons.

Our Take: “Backrooms,” the first episode of the Season 3 continuation of American Horror Stories , was written by Jon Robin Baitz and Joe Baken, and directed with creepy efficiency by David Gelb. What we liked about the episode is that the story starts in what is already every parent’s nightmare — enduring not knowing what happened to their missing child — and just amps up the creepiness factor from there.

It helps, of course, that Imperioli is excellent at playing an aggressively aggrieved person, spewing f-bombs while being scared shitless. He wants to wallow in his isolation, but when he finds himself in those liminal spaces, he has no idea why and how long he’s there.

Baitz and Baken are able to give this story some some layers, which is impressive given the 48-minute runtime. One of the issues we always had with horror anthologies like this is that the limited time makes writers emphasize the scary over the story. We don’t get every detail here, but enough to make the inevitable twist ending feel earned and make sense.

That kind of clarity might also be because Baitz and Baken eschew the usual Ryan Murphy/Brad Falchuk flourishes in this episode. It’s very maturely presented, and doesn’t have time for any BS involving camera angles, extraneous music cues or any other superfluousness. What we hope is that most of the episodes in this new batch will be similar.

Sex and Skin: Nothing in the episode we watched.

Parting Shot: Just like every time we’ve reviewed this show, giving the parting shot will give away the big twist.

Sleeper Star: Here are some of the guests that will be in this new batch of episodes: Victor Garber, Henry Winkler, June Squibb, Jeff Hiller, Debby Ryan, Jessica Barden, Michael Cyril Creighton and more.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Daniel is in the supermarket liminal space, he goes “What the actual fuck?” like he’s doing a TikTok video. Doesn’t seem like the kind of line a world-weary middle-aged man would say.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The latest batch of American Horror Stories episodes starts with an episode that gives us hope that the show will continue to give layered stories without being larded down by unnecessary stylistic flourishes.

Joel Keller ( @joelkeller ) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

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