American Horror Stories Premiere Review - "Rubber(wo)Man" and "Rubber(wo)Man Part 2"
American Horror Stories premieres, with two episodes, Thursday, July 15 exclusively on FX on Hulu.
American Horror Story, Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk’s decade-running TV franchise, forever bubbling over with scares and snark, is now embracing the episodic anthology game with American Horror Stories, an earnest stab at shorter quick-bite horror and, even possibly, an attempt to solve some of the lingering woes the regular Horror Story seasons have been suffering from for a handful of years now. The end result here, after a two-part premiere — “Rubber(wo)Man” Parts 1 and 2 — is a story that starts strong but then undercuts its initial bite with a second half that feels too silly and sloppy.
Keeping things within the American Horror Story universe, which officially went full shared universe with 2018’s American Horror Story: Apocalypse, “Rubber(wo)Man” brings us back into Season 1’s Murder House (which also was a big part of Apocalypse and a bit player in other seasons) for a new romp through the ghostly halls of the most haunted manor on the West Coast. And while none of main players from the original Murder House tale are back (Evan Peters, Dylan McDermott, Connie Britton, etc), the story still makes good use of the unique ghostly physics of the place and the new doomed family moving in to try and capitalize on the dwellings’ diabolical history.
It’s not known yet whether or not the remaining Stories episodes will be as overtly connected to famous past American Horror Story seasons or if this is just an “introduction to the new format” deal in order to solidly tether it to the franchise right out of the gate, but the notion works. As American Horror Story grows longer in the tooth and more frequently offers diminishing returns, Murder House is still one of the series’ best regarded seasons. So it’s both an easy and efficient idea to kick off this anthology show with a dive back into this lore-filled landscape.
When morose teen Scarlett (The Vast of Night’s Sierra McCormick) and her dads (Gavin Creel and returning AHS player Matt Bomer) move into the Murder House with intentions of flipping it into a spooky Airbnb, we’re submerged in a story about a high schooler getting corrupted by the dark forces of the dwelling (the Rubber Man, in particular). As the haunting unfolds, we discover that Scarlett herself comes with a uniquely traumatizing past as well as an attraction to the more violent aspects of BDSM porn. The first episode is then allowed to creepily morph into something less resembling tainted innocence and more embracing dark and dreaded spirits finding, and enabling, one another. Throw in a sprinkling of Stephen King’s Carrie and it makes for a mighty fun morsel.
