In the early hours of this morning, another episode of the new anthology series from Ryan Murphy set within his infamous American Horror Story universe made its way onto the FX on Hulu streaming hub. Last week, American Horror Stories took us back to the mothership’s origin story, giving us a 2-part Murder House-centric love story between the living Scarlett and the ghostly Ruby. Being an anthology series that changes storylines from episode to episode, this week’s episode introduced us to a new cast of characters and a brand new location.
Titled “Drive-In,” this week’s episode introduces us to high school student Chad (Rhenzy Feliz), who, in an attempt to fix the mistakes of the night before with his girlfriend Kelley (Maddison Bailey), secures tickets to a special drive-in screening of a previously banned film, Rabbit Rabbit. The film supposedly turns anybody who watches it into a face-eating killing machine. As always, in true American Horror Story fashion, our leading characters ignore the warning signs. Like… the literal warning signs… as in a survivor of the film’s original screening, was standing in the drive-in’s entrance holding a sign begging people not to watch it. Nonetheless, they proceed to walk right into unexpecting danger—surprise, surprise.
When the film begins rolling, the members of the audience in their respective cars are immediately captivated by what they’re seeing as they begin to enter a sort of hypnotic state before transitioning into flesh-eating monsters within minutes. Now, you’re probably asking, “but how do our heroic leads manage to not get caught up in the effects of the film?” Well, they’re making out in the back seat of their car while the nightmare outside their vehicle begins to unfold. The love-making is cut short when one of the film’s victims smashes through the back window and begins to attack Chad. Before the flesh-eating ghoul can do any real damage, Kelley starts the car and flings the possessed-like being back out of the window.
After speeding through the violence and terror occurring on the premises, the duo makes their way to the indoor lobby of the drive-in, where they’re chased by the hypnotised monsters all the way up into the projector room. Here they come face-to-face with the drive-in owner, who has also fallen victim to the film’s curse. After a short-lived fight amongst the two, Chad bashes the owner’s head in with a film reel canister, successfully killing her—which, might I add, was a fitting touch to the episode’s theme.
Our leading characters, Chad and Kelley, hide out for the rest of the night in the projector room until morning comes. When Chad wakes up, Kelley finds a shotgun conveniently placed inside the projector room and suggests they track down the director to destroy any remaining copies of the film to prevent any further screenings and to finally put an end to the movie’s evil.
The episode immediately takes us to our next location: the director’s home, which is a not-so-conveniently placed caravan in the middle of nowhere. Entering the caravan, Chad and Kelley immediately come face-to-face with the film’s creator, Larry Bitterman (portrayed by none other than AHS royalty John Carrol Lynch). Frustrated that the last film he worked on got snubbed from awards, Larry reveals he created Rabbit Rabbit to out-do his previous film by featuring so many subliminal messages that the reaction to the film isn’t due to the cinematic experience, but instead is the audience themselves. Tired of the whole cliche villainous monologue the director is preaching, Kelley demands that he hand over the original copy of the film and, when he doesn’t, she shoots him in the leg using the shotgun she acquired in the previous scene. Eventually, they get ahold of the original copy and set it on fire using the caravan’s stove, sending the entire caravan up in flames. Larry insists that this was just the beginning and that nothing could stop what’s going to happen next. Chad and Kelley excuse his baseless claims and leave the director for dead in the motorhome, now completely engulfed in flames.
The episode ends with our heroic duo, Chad and Kelley, making love while accepting that the worst is officially behind them. Meanwhile, over on Chad’s desk, his computer displays the cursed Rabbit Rabbit film that has been added to the streaming service Netflix. Outside of Chad’s window, we see the city skyline as it goes up in smoke with explosions. Sirens go off across the city; the scene cuts to black, and thus concludes the episode’s storyline.
Right– okay.
Now, I have a lot of things I would like to discuss regarding this episode but as I did with the Rubber Woman duology, I want to backtrack and try to figure out where the events of “Drive-In” take place within the American Horror Story extended universe.
To begin with, the film being added to Netflix, the world’s biggest streaming service, leaves a massive effect on the AHS world moving forward. A cursed film that turns you into a face-eating zombie is possibly the biggest risk to humanity that American Horror Story has thrown into its universe, so it clearly can’t go unnoticed in future installments of the Ryan Murphy crafted world, right? …or can it?
If you haven’t figured it out for yourself already, American Horror Stories‘ “Drive-In” most likely doesn’t take place within the mainline American Horror Story universe. Instead, these events take place within an alternate timeline of the show, which, as drastic as it may seem, isn’t as far-fetched as you would think. If you’ve paid serious attention to AHS‘s folklore throughout the past decade, you can easily pinpoint that it’s quite impossible for 2019’s American Horror Story: 1984 to co-exist with 2015’s Hotel, seeing as both seasons contain different versions of the real-life serial killer Richard Ramirez. In Hotel, Richard is dead, and his spirit takes part in James March’s annual Devils Night, whereas in AHS: 1984, Richard is very much alive when the show jumps to present times. In fact, he’s more than just alive… he’s immortal and stuck in a loop of being murdered by the Camp Redwood spirits every time he respawns to prevent him from leaving the Camp Redwood grounds, thus protecting the season’s latecomer protagonist, Bobby Richter—BUT, the events of Richard appearing in 1984 could easily be the butterfly effect of Mallory travelling back to 1918 Russia in the shows an eighth season, Apocalypse, in her attempt to save Anastasia Nikolaevna from being killed— but that goes way too deep into timelines, universes and other stuff that hurts my head too much to figure out.
See as we’re now returning to the Murder House YET AGAIN in the show’s upcoming season finale, continuing the story from last week’s episodes with the cast of AHS Murder House set to return, it’s a good indication that the events of “Drive-In” are not cannon in the main franchise’s timeline.
As much as I enjoyed the storyline of “Drive-In,” I can’t look past the fact it felt unfinished. The episode feels like it was building up to some massive final act just to end it on an underwhelming note with no real conclusion to the events that unfolded. Sure, the original copy of the film was destroyed, and the mastermind director behind it all was left for dead, but what about the dozens of people who were turned into face-eating zombie-esque monsters? Were we supposed to believe it was all over just because our heroic leads put a stop to any future in-person showings of the film? Why did Chad and Kelley go back to thinking life was normal again when it so clearly wasn’t? The way everything played out felt strange, especially given the fact the episode doesn’t really have a definitive ending.
“Drive-In” feels like the opening act to a zombie movie that was shelved and abandoned. The production value was impeccable, Maddison, Rhenzy, John, and Naomi all delivered amazing performances, and the cinematography and set design went above and beyond to fit the American Horror Story standards, but the execution of this storyline was the one thing that didn’t stick the landing. Maybe it’ll grow on me because, as I said, I did enjoy it; it just didn’t completely hit the mark of how great it could’ve been had it been given more time to figure out where exactly it was supposed to be headed.
So, was “Drive-In” a rushed episode, or is this just the type of storyline you can’t smash into a 40-minute runtime? That’s up to you to decide. Nonetheless, American Horror Stories delivered on its promise to deliver fresh, short-form horror stories to expand the fictional universe we love so much. So far, the series hasn’t given us anything remotely as memorable as what American Horror Story has over the past ten years, but maybe that’s just a case of the bar being set too high. Either way, I hope we see some great improvements in the storytelling over the next couple of episodes.
I’m rooting for this show to succeed and enter the same ranks as its predecessor, but right now, it’s barely scratching the surface of what it has the potential to be.
Here’s to hoping things pick up when stories return with a new episode next Thursday
*crosses fingers*
New Episodes of American Horror Stories are streaming every Thursday on FX on Hulu.
