The Part Of American Horror Stories: Drive In That Has Fans Scratching Their Heads
"American Horror Stories," the spin-off of Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk's anthology series "American Horror Story," is rolling right along. In its first episode, we got a new twist on an old character with "Rubber (Wo)Man," but the series is not destined to remain in the haunted halls of Murder House.
Its follow-up episode, "Drive In," penned by Manny Coto, is an ode to all the classic B-horror movies and the theaters where they were most often seen. It's a "what if" story where the "what if" is "what if a cursed film really was cursed?" The story follows Chad (Rhenzy Feliz), Kelley (Madison Bailey), and their friends as they take a trip to the drive-in to watch a forgotten, cursed horror film called "Rabbit Rabbit."
The story is that "Rabbit Rabbit" was shown only once in 1986 and nearly everyone at the movie screening went crazy and violently tried to kill one another. Chad, Kelley, and their friends are supposedly among the first people to see the film since that fatal night. Naturally, it turns out that the curse is real and we witness nearly everyone kill/be killed at the drive-in as a result of watching "Rabbit Rabbit."
People dig the dive into cursed films, drive-in theaters, and classic horror cinema, but there's one aspect of this episode that has fans a little confused — the ending.
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The good news is that Chad and Kelley survive the screening of "Rabbit Rabbit," and are even able to track down where the man behind the carnage, Larry Bitterman (John Carroll Lynch), is hiding out. Taking down Bitterman and destroying his original workprint copy of the film seems like it's game over — but that's where things get weird. It turns out Bitterman sold the rights to stream "Rabbit Rabbit" to Netflix, causing the world to descend into chaos as people begin watching it. There's just one hitch, though — it seems like violence breaks out mere moments after the film becomes available to stream.
"How [did] the movie got released on Netflix and literally one second later a whole city was going to destruction," asked u/titango477 on Reddit. People took particular issue with this story because it's linked to Ryan Murphy's "AHS" universe. "The thing is I'm sure this won't get addressed again," noted u/Rman823. "Now if this was a normal anthology series, fine. But given the show is attached to the AHS universe, it took me a little out of it."
It's true. "Rubber (Wo)Man" slots in with the "Murder House" story pretty much perfectly without disrupting any established canon. "Drive-In," on the other hand, feels like it has to take place in its own separate universe. Otherwise, all other episodes of "American Horror Stories" set in the same timeline would have to talk about the consequences of the episode's ending. It's a small nitpick, sure. But when you're trying to build a mood, sometimes the tiniest questions can become noisy enough to pull people out of the story.
"American Horror Stories" streams new episodes Thursdays on Hulu.