Necro

"Necro" is the seventh episode of the second installment of American Horror Stories. It premiered September 1, 2022 on Hulu.

A young mortician discovers the living are more terrifying than the dead.— FX Networks, official synopsis^[1]

Synopsis[]

A young mortician discovers the living are more terrifying than the dead.^[2]

Plot[]

Blood spatters a family home in Machiasport, Maine in 1998. A trail of it leads to a woman laying dead in the kitchen, a hammer not far away, watched over by a young girl, Sam. In 2022, the girl is now and adult and embalms and prepares corpses as a mortician in Whittier, California. The funeral director, Henderson, pulls her aside on her way out of the visitation service and commends her on a job well done. Her sincere care for the deceased has earned her a raise. She returns home to her district attorney boyfriend, Jesse, and they agree to celebrate that evening. She wants to initiate sex before he leaves for court, but he gently turns her down and suggests that the formaldehyde scent still clings to her despite her efforts to wash it off.

She discusses his rejection with her friends over wine. Sam thinks that more may be going on in their relationship, and that he just doesn't understand her. She suggests that he resents her working at the funeral home. Her friends suggest it is more about compromise, but Sam hesitates when asked if she would choose Jesse over her job. Sam relates that her communion with the dead and being able to help families say goodbye is rewarding and important.

Sam is preparing a man for his service when Charlie, the new body removal technician, bursts in with a new body. Sam notices that he whispers to the woman he's brought in a body bag before he leaves. Later, Charlie admits that he thanked the decedent for allowing him to escort her, which he considers a sacred honor. That evening, after a special effort at cleaning herself up for Jesse, they have sex; she has flashes of Charlie while with Jesse.

Another day, Sam and Charlie discuss how they feel about the afterlife and how they would prefer their body be disposed of after death. They bond over the history of funeral traditions, trading stories of the rites of different cultures. Charlie notes that Sam's adventurous nature should not be suppressed because of Jesse's more conservative tastes. Later, he discloses to her about his family, who all died in a collision with a drunk driver. She feels moved to tell him about her own encounter with family death, which she has not shared with anyone, but is interrupted by a call from Jesse before she can. She resolves to tell Charlie later, and rushes home to meet Jesse's parents.

The house is dark when she walks in, with the sound of broken glass and a candle drawing her into the kitchen. A crunch underfoot triggers a memory of the home invasion that ended in her mother's death. Collapsed and sobbing, Jesse finds her and comforts her, with a surprise party of guests behind him. She soon realizes that the crunch underfoot was a wedding proposal spelled out in cereal and rose petals. Jesse says he thought her favorite cereal would make for a romantic gesture, but she explains that she kept the cereal as a remembrance of her mother. The cereal and rose petals (resembling blood) spattered on the floor triggered her. She rejects his proposal, telling him he should find a normal girl, and rushes out of the house.

Another day, Sam pulls back the sheet on her newest corpse to care for. The paperwork describes "John" as an overdosed 26 year old, but she is dismayed to see Charlie's face. She cries as she tells the corpse that he was the only one that understood her and her darkness, and he made her feel less alone. She kisses and cuddles up to the corpse, and finds herself astride it. She feels its hand move and grab her leg before running off, horrified at her actions. Steeling herself, she returns to the slab and sees the body is gone. She runs out, vomiting, and encounters a living Charlie. He rationalizes that his lack of breathing was induced by a pill, and the autopsy incision was a prosthetic, but that things went too far. His idea of healing her was seen as a sick prank. She claims he is deranged, but he counters that she did have sex with him when she thought he was a corpse. She says that they are not alike, and leaves.

Two months later, Sam works demonstrating makeup at a store counter, occasionally haunted by glimpses of Charlie. Her friend Dani notes, on her wedding day, that Sam has not been the same since she quit her job. She's sad, and claims that she simply wants a boring regular life. In her vows, Sam says that Jesse is all she needs. Jesse's vows include a surprise video montage of their romantic moments together, but the assembled are all horrified when a clip of Sam's sexual encounter with apparent corpse has been inserted into the photos. Jesse demands that she deny it is her, but Charlie interrupts the wedding yelling that Jesse has killed everything special and alive about her. She says that Charlie is her delusional ex-coworker, but Jesse can not reconcile that there is a video that shows her having sex with a corpse. Dead or alive now, he says, she was having sex with another man she thought was dead. Jesse storms out, and Charlie declares his love for her. She is furious that he filmed them, and Charlie insists that it was the only way to reveal the truth to her about how she feels. She hates him, she says, and runs out of the church.

Another day, Sam applies for a job as a maid. The interviewer is clearly impressed at her knowledge and experience, but another employee calls him aside to show him her phone. He returns to Sam to tell her that the position has been filled. She protests, but he says that their business can't have a sex offender in people's homes. She is desperate, but he is clearly repulsed. In her car, she sees that a photo of her atop "dead" Charlie has become an Instagram meme. She can not avoid her new notoriety, and leaves a coffee shop (where she sees her old friend) pursued by calls of "zombie fucker". She purchases a gun. Eating (and living in) her car, she sees Charlie's hearse drive past and follows it.

Confronting Charlie at a grave he is digging, she holds the gun on him and tells him that he must pay for what he's done to her life. She wants to know why he hates her so much, but he tells her that he was trying to save her. He wanted to shock her awake by a close brush with death, and he selfishly did not want her to stop once she started intimacy with him. He also admits that he knew about her mother, and how toddler Sam continued to nurse from her during the three days before her corpse was found. Sam cries that the taste of death felt like love to her, and that she did not understand that her mother was not sleeping. Young Sam still tried to care for her, and that was the last time she felt safe. Abashed, she can no longer hold the gun on Charlie and agrees that he did rouse her from her sleepwalking with his prank. She continues, though, that he should have left her sleeping. As she can't put the pieces of her life back together, she points the gun at her own temple. He talks her down, telling her that they can be happy together. She agrees, and she shoots him in the stomach, knocking him into the grave he dug. She sets the dirt loader to fill in the grave before jumping in herself, and they make love as the soil buries them both.

Featured Characters[]

Quotes[]

Notes[]

Raised Questions[]

Gallery[]

"Death can make you feel alive."

American Horror Stories - Installment 2, Episode 7 Trailer - Necro - FX

Sam Confronts Charlie - Scene - American Horror Stories - FX

References[]