How does A Classic Horror Story conclude and what happens during its post-credit scene? Co-directed by Roberto De Feo and Paolo Strippoli, A Classic Horror Story was released via Netflix in 2021. The film is both a homage to classic and contemporary horror movies (including The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Cabin in The Woods and Midsommar) and a meta-commentary on the genre itself and consumption of violence in the media.
A Classic Horror Story in an Italian horror movie that begins with five strangers carpooling in an RV to southern Italy each for their own reasons: Elisa (Matilda Lutz, Revenge) to get an abortion in her hometown at her overbearing mother’s insistence; couple Sofia (Yuliia Sobol) and Mark (Will Merrick) who are traveling to a wedding; doctor Riccardo (Peppino Mazzotta) to visit his young daughter and estranged wife and film student Fabrizio (Francesco Russo), who is chauffeuring the group en route to visiting his family in Calabria.
Their journey comes to a halt when the RV crashes into a tree, knocking them unconscious. The group wakes to find themselves stranded in a clearing in the middle of a wooded area miles from where they crashed. The RV won’t start, there’s no cell phone service to call for help and the only thing nearby is a creepy cabin in the woods that signs suggest is home to a cult that’s into human sacrifice.
When said cult arrives and kills Mark, the remaining A Classic Horror Story characters retreat to the cabin’s attic where they find a young girl named Chiara (Alida Baldari) encased in a straw cocoon with her tongue cut out. Come daylight, the group tries to escape through the woods only to find themselves back in the clearing and the RV gone. They take refuge in the cabin where they somberly share a bottle of beer the cult left behind while pilfering the RV, but Elisa and Fabrizio wake up to discover the movie's twisted cult performing their deadly ritual on Sofia, Riccardo and Chiara.
A Classic Horror Story's heroine Elisa soon realizes there’s something off about the situation and deduces Fabrizio drugged the beer they drank the night previously. She also discovers he has a hidden earpiece, and the third act of A Classic Horror Story reveals Fabrizio has been making a mafia-funded snuff movie the whole time. When Elisa scoffs at the concept, he claims it’s the future of horror filmmaking – viewers lap up real-life violence in the media, so he’s simply giving the public what they want in the form of a horror snuff film.
Elisa doesn’t blindly accept her fate, however, and takes revenge by gunning down Chiara (who, it turns out, is Fabrizio’s sister and an actor in his film) and Fabrizio before escaping through the forest to a crowded beach where families start recording her with their cell phones rather than trying to help her – which kind of proves the point Fabrizio was trying to make. Despite Fabrizio’s death and Elisa’s presumed escape, the very end of A Classic Horror Story suggests that the mafia-sponsored operation is still up and running. A post-credit scene reveals Fabrizio’s movie has been uploaded to a Netflix-like streaming service called Bloodflix where viewers comment that it isn’t gory enough.