America Horror Story Hotel Recap With Spoilers: Checking In

A cab pulls up outside the hotel. A young blonde girl and her friend get out of the cab, excited to experience things like Jurassic World and Fast & Furious at Universal Studios but they’re surprised to find out the hotel is 10 miles away from the park. They walk inside and explore the extravagant but hollow hotel. At the counter, the girls ring the bell. They’re sketched out about the situation but ring the bell again.

A woman walks out. She had them the first time. They decide they want their deposit back because they want to go to another hotel closer to the attractions. No refunds, though, the woman says, “Welcome to America.” She tells the girls, “Trust me, this place will grow on ya,” and escorts them to the hotel and room. Lights flicker. They hear moans from behind a door. There is no wi-fi and the building is a dead-zone for cell service.

One girl heads to the ice machine as a woman cleans a “terrible accident,” from room 51 off of bed sheets. Looks a lot like blood! The girl sees a little boy, who points to a little girl, who runs off and disappears. Then the boy disappears, too. As the girl scoops ice, a hand with a shiny gold glove and black finger nails reaches out at the back of her head. She jolts around and it is gone.

Back in the room, the other girl complains about the smell, comparing it to a dead animal. The girl who got ice calls the front desk and wants to change beds and is rejected while her friend is terribly creeped out by the bed. She says the smell is coming from the bed and finds the stitched up mattress. One grabs a knife and cuts open the stitching. A hand reaches up and a deranged, creepy man erupts from the bed, shrieking at the girls.

The girls asks the woman from the desk what happened and she tells them the police are coming and they have to talk to her. She offers them a new room and the reluctantly enter. She tells them they never rent out this room.

They try to make phone calls but have no signal. Time goes by as they wait for the police. A radio turns on. One girl wakes up on the bed and calls out for her friend. She finds her on the floor being eaten by the two young children from earlier.

A cop, John Lowe, storms into a room we he finds people in a sex position, the female impaled and nailed to the bed. The man is still alive with no eyes or tongue.John evaluates what is going on and rules they were both married before realizing his penis is glued inside the woman and he’s on male enhancement drugs.

At the station, John reviews some cases. He looks at pictures of a mutilated body and listen to a breakdown of the crime scene. His daughter calls him on Facetime. Her mom doesn’t want to talk to him. An officer tells John he has a call but John doesn’t take it. He reads to his daughter instead. He leaves and gets a call from a voice disguised man who threatens to nail another person to a headboard.

A man stands at the hotel’s counter and demands a room. She takes the keys to room 64, the last one she gave to the girls. She tells him the elevator is out of service today so he takes the stairs. In the lobby, a woman tells Iris, the clerk, she has dibs on this one. Screams sound as he walks down the hallway to his room, past some very odd men who watch him.

In the room, he prepares some drugs and injects himself with them. The maid tells him about how she has to clean the sheets after people die. A man who looks like a mummy with a big metal strap-on shaped like a drill rips the mans pants off after throwing him on the bed.

Officer Lowe meets Iris. She calls him out for being a cop and wants to know more about room 64. She calls out one of the men who watched the other man go to his room a moment ago to take him to 64. In room 64, the man is getting raped by the mummy-like creature as the woman who called dibs enters the room. She tells him, “The more you scream, the more he likes it.”

In the elevator, the bald man and John talk a bit. The bald man tells John he can see his pain. He knows he lost something.

The woman tells the man to say, “I love you, Sally.” He does and then says it again. His eyes go black. She cries and backs off then lights cigarette as he lays on the bed. John approaches the room and enters with his gun drawn. It’s empty. He lays on the bed. The druggie is on the floor beneath him but he falls asleep only to wake up to the radio and a little kid next to him running away. “Holden?” John asks as he gets out of the bed, then following him down the hallway.

A hand turns a record player on. A woman puts make-up on as a man sits in a bath tub. She snorts white powder off of the counter. The two exit the hotel and walk through a graveyard to an outdoor movie. They stare at another couple and the couple looks back at them so they start getting undressed and start making sexual gestures to the couple. The four people go back to the hotel.

Three are naked in bed and Lady Gaga walks in, kissing the other man as her apparent boyfriend engages with the other.A foursome ensues before the hotel couple slashes the throats of the new couple and bathes themselves in their blood and tastes it. They lay with the bodies, in bed with their blood, and call housekeeping to clean it up.

John sits in his car and goes into his house. His wife complains as she looks for her keys. John finds them. She goes to work and John suggests sushi to his daughter.

Iris brings food to girls from the opening scene. She tells them their entrapment in this blacklit cages is their own fault. They packed a bunch of drugs. She prepares a terribly awful sounding smoothie to cleanse their bodies. She uses a funnel and tube to try to feed one girl as Sally walks in. Sally suggests Iris be more gently with the girls. Iris reveals she is stuck in this hotel because of Sally and tells Sally to feed the girls their smoothies herself and it ill then be Sally’s fault that the girls don’t taste good. Iris leaves and Sally explains the room they are in was formerly used for puppetry. She frees a girl and tells her to run. She runs while her friend cries, “Don’t leave me,” in a foreign language. Iris notices the girl running through the lobby and follows her to where her throat is slut at the door by the Countess. Iris apologizes for her escape and the Countess insists it can never happen again. Iris looks petrified.

Over sushi, John’s daughter tells him about a dream she had but she can’t remember “his face.” She suggests putting “the pictures up again.” He gets a text message from his wife with an address and plea for help. He races over and cops are outside as an alarm sounds. He draws his gun and investigates inside. A rustling tree draws the cop watching John’s daughter away. His phone rings and the voice disguised man is on the line, saying, “I told you I would do it again.” His daughter gets out of the car and enters the building. John finds somebody and demands to see his hands. His daughters wanders around alone. John chases the man who walks away from him. His daughter finds men with their intestines hanging from the stomachs while they’re strung up from the ceiling. She screams and John rushes to her.

Flashback to Santa Monica in 2010. John, his wife, and their two young kids walk the pier. John ventures off with his son, Holden, and puts him on a carousel before looking at his phone. When the horse comes back around his son is gone. John starts screaming for his son.

In the present, his wife is scared but wants John to be around. John suggests they are safe. He’ll have two cops watching at all times. She tells him she doesn’t blame him for Holden.

A man and his son get out of a truck and are escorted into the hotel by a woman who tells them her dog was put down today. The man explains they’re moving their lives there and his son sees the mummy-figure through a door and runs back to his dad. Iris questions the realtor and is appalled by the sale of the penthouse.

In the room, the realtor opens the curtains, waking a nude and angry Donovan. Donovan rushes to the Countess. She turns to Will Drake is pleased to meet him. She gives him a drink as Locklin touches things around him. Will is impressed by her art work and compliments the energy and voices in this hotel. The Countess suggest Donovan show Will the light sculpture and Locklin stays to look at the record collection. The Countess takes him down the elevator to show him something she claims he’ll enjoy.

She reveals a secret door and brings Locklin inside where the young kids from earlier are playing games and eating candy. The Countess introduces Locklin to Holden.

Iris panics while telling Donovan about the hotel sale. He tells her to let go.

In a presumable flashback, Iris watches Sally from her car. It’s 1994. Donovan and Sally enter the hotel and the bald man sits at the desk smoking a cigarette and watching them. Iris asks him to tell her where he is staying but he won’t tell her. She offers money and he flicks it off the table before answering her question about the closest ATM.

Donovan and Sally inject themselves with drugs. He wants a fresh needle but she insists she is the cleanest person he knows, so he uses it anyway. He lays down and she smears make-up on her face. Iris bands on the door and Sally hears it and answers. Iris rushes in and tries to help Donovan who is unresponsive as Sally leaves. Sally sees an open window and Iris pushes her from it.

Iris walks down the hallway in shock of what she has just done. She finds the Countess over Donovan. “Your boy has a jaw line for days,” she tells Iris.

John packs his things as his wife looks on. He kisses his daughter goodbye. He arrives at the hotel with his bags. Iris checks him in to room 64.