Summer Streamin' 24 - American Horror Stories - Season Three (B)

Well yes I have already blogged about American Horror Stories, third season back here. However at the time, we didn't know (like a number of strike impacted series) it would be released in two parts across October 2023 and October 2024.

It definitely is Ryan Murphy season! Only issue for Murphy is, Doctor Odyssey is not getting the ratings a second season renewal may need. That said a third 9-1-1, this time based in Hawaii (sounds like Rescue: HI-Surf right?) has been put into the works.

That said the OG spin-off 9-1-1: Lone Star is set to conclude next month.

But one series has been missing this scary season. American Horror Story. So I guess at least we get five (solid) episodes of the spin-off American Horror Stories.

When I say solid, I mean solid. The last four episodes last year were grand, these were an easy, scary (at times) watch. And we can all agree 2024 just got scary yesterday!

The next installment was first reported in May 2023, when it was affected by the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike.

In August, it was announced that the episodes would premiere on October 26 as a four-episode "Huluween" event.

The next instalment of five episodes was first reported on in September 2024 with an expected premiere date of October 15, 2024, as another "Huluween" event, with The Hollywood Reporter referring to it as the fourth season.

So is it still season three or four? Who actually cares, cause this was actually a decent watch in Australia on Binge.

So who and what are these five episodes about?

First up is, Backrooms, starring Michael Imperioli, Matthew Maher, David Pittu & Natalie Gold. A screenwriter begins slipping in and out of backrooms, eerie locales inhabited by strange hostile masked entities, his missing son being among them. 

Upon returning for the first time he discovers that he had been missing for three weeks and that his son's body was found. After more time lost in a backroom, he finds a video of a man who has documented travels to the backrooms and visits the man in prison, where he learns that only those with self-guilt and sufficient isolation from reality experience this phenomenon and the only way to make it stop is to clear one's conscience. 

After yet another leap in time, he returns to find the police closing in on him for the murder of his son and he is shot down when he goes for a gun. As he dies he remembers his frustration that reached a breaking point in which he strangled the boy to death. 

Awakening in hell, he is confronted by a demonic version of his son who gives him the option to exit instead of being tormented by the masked entities. He enters into an empty waiting room with only a stack of magazines on being a good father and learns he will be stuck waiting there for billions or trillions of years.

Then we have Clone, starring Victor Garber, Guy Burnet, Casey Thomas Brown, Dagmara Domińczyk & David Deblinger. Clone revolves around tech billionaire David being put into a medically induced coma after suffering a stroke, his boyfriend John learns that he has no say in the man's affairs. 

This one is slightly spicy!

He discovers that David has been working on an AI version of himself, which is then sent home to be a lifelike companion to John. While at first taken aback by the differences and technical hiccups, John eventually warms to the new David but soon he hears news that the real David has made a full recovery and is returning home. 

He bids the AI goodbye and welcomes back the real David, but David murders him, proclaiming he had realised that he deserved someone more worthy of his last remaining days than John - himself. Later after having sex with his AI likeness, it's revealed that David had completely wiped John from its memory.

Then we head into maybe my favourite, the black and white, X. Featuring Mia Isaac, Dyllón Burnside, Jennifer Ferrin, Kate Eastman & Henry Winkler

This was dark set in a creepy hospital. With nurse Claire Michaels begins to investigate a mysterious unsettling patient, Alice Taylor when she appears at the hospital and stabs one of the orderlies, painting an X on the wall in his blood. 

She uncovers an unethical experimental program on cancer patients which implicates several of her colleagues, including her friend Nurse Mulling who later commits suicide out of remorse for her involvement. She discovers Ward X, where survivors of these experiments like Alice are being caged. She is sedated and along with a fellow staff member, tied to operating tables to become new experiments but she is saved by Alice and kills the doctor and nurse. 

She awakens in a hospital bed and leads a detective down to Ward X, where she is betrayed by him and the accompanying nurse and once again tied down, locked inside of Ward X to become a new test subject.

So good! Like this season was a solid, easy binge!

We get a little Irish in Leprechaun. This one stars Jessica Barden, Henry Eikenberry, Hudson Oz, Daniel Zolghadri, Angel Bismark, Billy Carter, Michael Cyril Creighton & June Squibb. Yes June Squibb, from Getting On and one of my favourite small films of 2024, Thelma!

In 1851, a man is pulled down a well for gold. That same well remains over the years til present day. A down on his luck small town man is upset to be unemployeed while his pregnant girlfriend works as a manager of a small town bank. 

After being asked out for drinks with an old friend, he is talked into joining his high school friends into breaking into his girlfriend's bank to steal bars of gold which had become larger due to COVID-19.

Despite being warned of leprechauns and mentions of missing townspeople, that is ignored and the plan continues on. With the help of a newcomer, Declan, they are able to break into the bank, by coming in during business hours and helping the others sneak inside once it was closed. 

However once inside, things go terribly wrong as one by one they are attacked by an unseen figure. It is revealed that the girlfriend is part leprechaun and its due to touching the gold that everyone dies.

And finally, the short and sweet (like literally just over thirty minutes), The Thing Under the Bed. Starring Debby Ryan, Melanie Field, Jeff Hiller, Melonie Diaz, Matthew Del Negro, Frank Pando & Matthew Holcomb.

This one wasn't the best, but still creepy. Honestly this is one of Murphy's best efforts in a while. No news on a fourth run of the American Horror Stories episodes, however you can stream all season three episodes (finally) now on Binge. Along with seasons one and two. However this entire package of nine episodes in the third season was the best. By far!