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‘American Horror Stories’ Went Straight Up ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ This Week

Published

5 years ago

August 7, 2021

Last week, American Horror Stories had a killer mall Santa in the form of Danny Trejo going holly-jolly and ape shit all over some morally bankrupt, social media influencers. This week’s episode, titled Ba’al went all out with a full on 48-minute satanic ride; that was like Rosemary’s Baby on speed.

Ba’al focused on a young couple willing to do anything in order to get pregnant. After a string of unfortunate failed attempts, the couple is out of options, but decide to keep trying in spite of not being able to. On the way out of the fertility clinic, a receptionist gives the young woman a small figure with no discernible features. After taking that figure home, the couple miraculously becomes pregnant.

Initially, the couple is really easy to like. Billie Lourde is great in the role of the poor woman at the center of the whole Rosemary’s Baby satanic fiasco. Of course, Lourde goes from timid and sweet to hysterical and uncontrollable to finish out the arc.

Flash-forward to 9 months later and the couple has a happy-bouncing baby in its crib. However, one night while watching the child through the baby monitor, mom see’s a terrifying demon standing above the crib. It’s actually a jolt. The tremendous make up of the demon combined with the scare timing was very well-done. From here on out it becomes the Rosemary’s Baby blueprint being fully worked out. However, this is Ryan Murphy and Co. so, you can expect some unexpected bits in there. As always the bit of silliness pushed up against horror has almost always been this series’ bread and spooky butter. I think it has been that way ever since season 2, to be honest.

American Horror Stories seems to have the same problems from episode to episode. There clearly just isn’t enough time to fit one of Murphy’s 7 twist structures in 48-minutes of runtime. Less is more. I think that Danny Trejo as the killer Santa worked the best because there wasn’t anything to get convoluted about. It was a straight up Christmas slasher. The overactive squished plots haven’t kept me from coming back week after week to keep up with the anthology. It’s been fun. Plus, there is always something that takes me back to Tales From the Crypt anthology nights back on HBO. Those were special enough to have a left a residual seed of nostalgia, that works in favor of me continuing with this series.

This is neither here nor there but, there is a brief moment in this episode that features a room full of TV execs all chatting about a show called “Gaslighters.” They mention they can put any sort of bullshit in episodes of the series and that the audience will keep coming back no matter what… At times, I have felt that Ryan Murphy is trolling us all with American Horror Story to a certain extent. This whole “Gaslighters” series is an all out huge wink at the audience that proves me right. It is so on the nose, that it is too on the nose. But, I digress.

Ba'al

Ba’al is a fun but all too quick of a ride. Still, I managed to enjoy it. I’ve noticed that I have to watch these with a certain amount of forgiveness in mind. They are sort of trashy and, ultimately, I think that is what I love about them.

Much like, Tales From the Crypt and Twilight Zone there is a big fat morality statement to be had in Ba’al. This isn’t always the case for American Horror Stories. In fact, its rare. Usually, the decadent rules the day in this series. So, it makes a for a nice change to see assholes get their just deserts.

Speaking of make-up effects, much like last week’s The Naughty List, this one has an all out gore-fest of slayings. The huge effects are enough of a reason to dig in and stream all on their own merit.

American Horror Stories: Ba’al is now on FX on Hulu along with the rest of the series. New episodes are added every Thursday.

Have you been keeping up with American Horror Stories? What has been your favorite episode so far? Let us know in the comments section.

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Shudder’s May Is the Best Month They’ve Had in a While.

Published

2 days ago

April 27, 2026

Luna Gray

Shudder dropped their May 2026 programming slate and it is heavier than most months. The lead is The Terror: Devil in Silver, the long-awaited third installment of AMC’s horror anthology, premiering May 7 with new episodes weekly through June 11. Next up, Tales from the Crypt, all seven seasons, begins streaming May 1 after years off the market. Four new exclusive films fill out the rest of the month.

The Terror: Devil in Silver

The first two seasons of The Terror stand as some of the best horror television of the past decade. Season one sent the crew of HMS Terror on a doomed Arctic voyage in 1845. Season two, Infamy, placed its story inside a Japanese American internment camp during World War II. Neither shared a cast nor a plot with the other. Both were exceptional. Season three takes Victor LaValle’s novel and builds it into a six-episode limited series. Dan Stevens plays Pepper, a working-class moving man who lands in a psychiatric hospital through bad luck and a worse temper. What he finds inside is not treatment.

Karyn Kusama, who directed the Yellowjackets pilot and earned an Emmy nomination for it, directs the opening two episodes and serves as co-executive producer. LaValle and Chris Cantwell co-wrote the scripts. Ridley Scott executive produces. The ensemble behind Stevens includes Judith Light, CCH Pounder, Aasif Mandvi, Stephen Root, and Marin Ireland. This is the kind of combination that earns attention before a single frame has aired.

New episodes premiere weekly after May 7.

Tales from the Crypt

Tales from the Crypt ran on HBO from 1989 to 1996. Seven seasons. Ninety-three episodes. Each one a self-contained story hosted by the Crypt Keeper, a wisecracking animated corpse voiced by John Kassir, who closes every episode with a pun only he finds funny.

The show pulled from EC Comics and assembled talent at a level that looks almost unreasonable in retrospect: Brad Pitt, Demi Moore, Christopher Reeve, Catherine O’Hara, and Steve Buscemi in front of the camera. Robert Zemeckis, Tobe Hooper, and William Friedkin behind it. Tom Hanks, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Michael J. Fox also directed episodes.

The series has been effectively unavailable to stream for years, tied up in rights complications. It is now on Shudder. Season one drops May 1. Subsequent seasons premiere weekly on Fridays, with the final season 7 arriving June 12. Watch parties run every Friday at 9pm ET. There is no good reason to wait on this one.

The Exclusives

Whistle arrives May 8 and is the exclusive to prioritize. Directed by Corin Hardy, who made The Nun, and starring Dafne Keen, Sophie Nélisse, Percy Hynes White, and Nick Frost, it follows high school students who find an ancient Aztec Death Whistle and discover that blowing it summons their future deaths to hunt them down. Totally normal thing to happen.

Heresy lands May 1 and is worth knowing about before it arrives. Director Didier Konings is making his feature debut after years as a concept artist on Stranger Things, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

Smothered arrives May 29 as a Shudder Original. It is Indonesian, and it is produced by Joko Anwar, the director behind Satan’s Slaves and Impetigore. That name means something to anyone who has been paying attention to international horror over the past decade. The film follows a micro-painting artist who loses part of his memory in an accident and returns home to find a woman claiming to be his mother.

This Is Not a Test streams May 22. Directed by Adam MacDonald and adapted from Courtney Summers’ 2012 novel, it stars Olivia Holt as a student sheltering in a high school during a zombie outbreak.

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[Exclusive Clip] ‘From the Beyond: High Strangeness in the Bennington Triangle’

Published

3 days ago

April 26, 2026

Ryan T. Cusick

Audiences are invited to explore one of Vermont’s most mysterious regions in From the Beyond: High Strangeness in the Bennington Triangle, arriving later this month on streaming platforms and DVD.

The documentary will debut on April 28, 2026, on platforms including Apple TV, Prime Video, and Google Play. DVD editions will be available exclusively through the Small Town Monsters online shop.

Directed by Seth Breedlove, the film continues the company’s exploration of folklore, cryptids, and unexplained phenomena. Breedlove’s previous work includes The Mothman of Point Pleasant, On the Trail of Bigfoot, American Werewolves, and more than two dozen feature-length productions. In total, Small Town Monsters has released more than thirty films, along with investigative programs, web series, books, podcasts, and exclusive membership content.

From the Beyond: High Strangeness in the Bennington Triangle was made possible through the support of backers from the company’s 2025 Kickstarter campaign.

Set in rural Vermont, the documentary examines the legend of the Bennington Triangle, an area associated with reports of UFOs, ghosts, phantom lights, mysterious creatures, and a series of unexplained disappearances. At the center of the mystery is Glastenbury Mountain, where decades of unanswered questions continue to inspire speculation.

Going beyond folklore and campfire tales, the film asks a chilling question: Why is Glastenbury Mountain so inexplicable, and what happened to those who went missing?

Check out our exclusive clip below.

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This Week in Horror: DC Goes Full Body Horror, A24 Has Its Chainsaw Man, and The Bone Temple Is Finally Yours

Published

5 days ago

April 24, 2026

Luna Gray

Good week. The Clayface trailer dropped and made DC relevant to this website for the first time in a while, A24 put a director on the Texas Chainsaw Massacre reimagining, and we got some interviews worth reading. Here is all of it.

Clayface Has a Trailer, and It Is Exactly What You Want

The Clayface trailer landed Wednesday, and it is DC’s first real horror film. Not horror adjacent. Not dark. Horror. Tom Rhys Harries plays Matt Hagen, an actor whose face gets disfigured by a gangster. He turns to a scientist, played by Naomi Ackie, who transforms his body into clay. Then the body horror starts.

James Watkins directed, which is the right choice. He made Speak No Evil and before that The Woman in Black, and he understands how to make dread feel physical. The screenplay is by Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini. That combination should tell you everything about the tone they are going for.

A24 Has a Director for Texas Chainsaw Massacre and His Last Film Cost Under a Million Dollars

Deadline confirmed that Curry Barker is writing and directing A24’s reimagining of the 1974 original. Barker made Obsession for under a million dollars. Focus Features paid north of fifteen million to distribute it. It sits at 96% on Rotten Tomatoes. A24 hired him before it even opens, which opens May 15.

Kim Henkel, who co-created the original with Tobe Hooper, is executive producing his own creation’s reimagining. That is either a blessing or a haunting. Probably both.

Astrolatry Is Going to Cannes and We Talked to the Actor Who Faced the Creature

Astrolatry is heading to the Frontières Buyers Showcase on May 16-17. The film has a sentient severed penis that grows into a ten-foot practical creature with spiky teeth. We interviewed star Ethan Daniel Corbett about what it was actually like to act against it. Short answer: genuinely terrifying. Long answer is on the site.

The Bone Temple Is Home

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple hit 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and DVD on Tuesday. If you held out from the digital release in February, now is the time. The 4K presentation is supposed to be great. Extras include audio commentary and a deleted scene. If your gonna watch The Bone Temple, why not watch it where the snacks are better.