Watch This: FX and Hulu Aim To Scare the Bejeezus Out of You With American Horror Stories Event

If you’re not a horror fan, October really isn’t your month. That’s especially the case in 2023, or 18 A.S. (The Year of Our Streaming Lords), as scary movies and TV shows occupy more space than ever on the dozens of platforms available. It’s hard to keep up with all the options, even amid the slowdown resulting from the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes.

And some programs make the viewing experience more complicated than others, which brings us to American Horror Stories (not to be confused with the original American Horror Story). The first four episodes of Stories' third season are landing on FX-on-Hulu this Thursday in a “Huluween Event.” The announcement came a mere 10 days earlier, possibly because FX and executive producers Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk (correctly) assumed that a content-starved America doesn't require a lot of advance notice.

At least it’s seasonally appropriate, even if it's not entirely clear what makes this so-called event different from AHStories proper. Horror is intrinsic to the concept of both the date and the series itself, after all, and fashioning a portmanteau out of “Hulu” and “Halloween” is kind of a no-brainer anyway. And if it means dropping these episodes into a massive debris field of Halloween-friendly viewing options, Murphy and Falchuk probably aren’t losing any sleep about the show’s chances. For not only is it the "scary season" (sigh), but horror itself continues to be extremely successful.

It’s a genre that doesn’t require elaborate CGI, big budgets or even recognizable actors. Theatrical releases are reliably profitable, even when critically panned. Case in point: The Exorcist: Believer recently crossed the $100 million box office threshold, though it remains to be seen if Universal recoups the reported four times that amount the studio shelled out for the franchise rights. And for every title that plays in theaters, dozens more end up on streaming platforms.

If horror movies are big box office, then horror anthologies are big TV ratings. Stories is in its third season, signs point to Black Mirror delivering a seventh (yes, it's a horror series), and the fourth installment of Shudder's Creepshow just kicked off last week. After decades of halting attempts to replicate the success of The Twilight Zone (with an '80s version) or to create an ill-advised daytime TV anthology series hosted by Freddy Krueger (Freddy's Nightmares), studios appear to have hit on a successful formula for this type of show: the morgue the merrier (hat tip: Tales from the Crypt, 1989–96).

American Horror Stories will probably appeal to those who are fans of AHStory, but — more important — to those who aren't. Ryan Murphy's shows have a history of coming out of the gate strong (like Texas A&M's football team) before ending the season in whimper (like Texas A&M's football team). AHStory itself technically qualifies as an anthology because each season is a standalone story, but the episodic nature and multiple writers of Stories (and other anthologies) mean viewers may be more likely to forgive an off episode to see what the next one offers.

Having said that, the Season 3 preview isn't what you'd call hard to decipher. "Daphne" appears to be about an Echo/Nest-type device gone bad. "Tapeworm" involves a young model ingesting a parasite to keep her weight down, until it apparently turns into something worse. "Organ" offers a twist on the old stolen kidney urban legend, and "Bestie" ... well, nothing with a hammer and a hand in a vice can be good.

All these examples are in keeping with an old trend in horror made more blatant than ever by modern times: They’ve always held up a mirror to society. But as society itself becomes more nightmarish, what are filmmakers to do? Your Echo going all HAL 9000 is only slightly more troubling than the fact that voice assistants are already a privacy nightmare. The “Tapeworm Diet” was and is still a thing, as is trafficking humans for their organs.

Murphy and company (and Black Mirror’s Charlie Brooker) realize vampires and zombies can’t really cut it in the face of climate change, war and creeping fascism, so they’re left with taking our grim reality and … not making it worse, necessarily, but instead trying to put such a bizarre spin on it that it ends up entertaining or, at least, cathartic. The tapeworm is really an alien! They’re not just stealing your organs, they’re eating them! You’ve been dead all this time!

The formula has worked so far, and time will tell if it’s enough to keep up with the horrors of everyday existence.