American Horror Stories: Rubber (Wo)Man – Review

When acclaimed writer and producer, Ryan Murphy, announced that he would be further expanding his television horror universe with a new spin-off series to his highly successful show American Horror Story I was immediately intrigued, excited and most importantly ready to see and experience more.

The series is entitled American Horror Stories and alike its sister series the show takes the form of an anthology except this time around the show will be made up of 10 individual standalone stories as opposed to an anthological setting like the main show.

The first story of the series, entitled “Rubber (Wo)Man”, takes place in a familiar setting from the series. Fans of the main show will instantly recognise the main location of the first season, the Murder House. Alike many of our visits to the house the episode opened with a new family (comprising of Matt Bomer, Gavin Creel and Sierra McCormick) moving in after finalising a sale and alike all the previous owners the history of the house didn’t prove enough to scare them away.

Whilst living in the house McCormick’s character, Scarlett, begins to experience visits from some of the houses previous inhabitants. These visions accompanied with her seemingly dark desires for violence and murder mean she is a prime candidate to take over the roll of “Rubber Man”.

As the two-part episode progresses we learn a lot about the family, their dynamic (the complex and seemingly unhappy and unsatisfied marriage between Creel and Bomer proves to be an interest watch especially due to Creels encounter with the maintenance worker) and how the human psyche can be tarnished and damaged by trauma and paranormal influence.

The writing of the story was very true to Murphy’s style and although it fell under the spin off this story felt like it could easily have been part of the main franchise and although all the characters (minus Scarlett) did succumb to untimely and gruesome deaths I would’ve loved to see more of these characters and been able to see them grow into fully fledged additions of the universe that is American Horror Story.

Overall I loved this episode and thought it was a strong and stellar introduction to the show and where the show is going to go, simply put: I cannot wait to see more!

American Horror Stories is now available every Wednesday in the UK on Disney+