The best horror shows on Netflix and other streaming services

Who doesn’t love a good scary story?

Here at Polygon, we regularly update our list of the best horror movies to watch on streaming services at home. But what about horror TV shows? You are in luck, dear reader.

Supernatural thrillers, fictional adaptations of real scary stories, and an under-the-radar pick for best zombie show on TV – we’ve put together this list of great horror TVs to watch at home. We didn’t record shows that have strong horror elements but aren’t horror through and through, such as twin peaks (which you can see on Showtime) or Doom Patrol (which you can watch on HBO Max). is twin peaks a horror show? You have to decide that. What’s not up for debate is that it rules, just like the shows we’ve listed below.

Do you have other favorites that aren’t mentioned here? Let us know in the comments!

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diabolical

In the late 2000s, TV power couple Robert and Michelle King created one of the best television dramas to ever grace our airwaves The good wife. A decade and a change later, they’re back with one of the most compelling series on television: the spiritual horror thriller diabolical.

diabolical follows a group of supernatural investigators who each have wildly different opinions on how real the paranormal is. dr Kristen Bouchard (Katja Herbers) is a forensic psychologist and skeptic, David Acosta (Mike Colter) is an aspiring priest and full believer, and Ben Shakir (Aasif Mandvi) is a techie who doesn’t believe in any of it. And their employer, by the way, is the Catholic Church.

There are many elements that make diabolical so good. It’s a real serial TV show in a world full of long films disguised as TV; It has a fantastic cast, led by the lovely Herbers and a very cheeky Michael Emerson as the central antagonist; and the Kings’ sense of humor shines through with goofy gags (including The Pop-Up Book of Terrifying Things, which announces each episode’s title) that balance the show’s darker theme.

but diabolical isn’t just a breezy TV show — it’s justifiably disturbing. Instead of following the path of spiritual horror set by The Exorcistwhere the horrors of catholic mythology are explicitly real, diabolical Instead, it deftly leans toward agonism, rarely giving you a straight answer as to whether what you saw was supernatural or righteous strange. Uncertainty is one of the best flavors of horror. —pete people

diabolical can be viewed on Paramount Plus.

midnight fair

Mike Flanagan (doctor sleep) has done several limited horror series for Netflix, and one more is coming soon The Midnight Club. I’ve heard great things about his first two The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manorbut midnight fair is the only one I’ve made time for. And let me say: It reigns.

midnight fair takes place in an isolated New England town that is deeply Catholic with strong conservative leanings. When a young man (Zach Gilford) returns home after a tragic incident, he struggles to reconnect with the community he left behind. Meanwhile, the town’s longtime priest goes missing and a mysterious young man (Hamish Linklater) appears to take his place. The town is quickly captivated by the young man’s charisma, and I’ll just let you find out the rest!

Flanagan lets his projects breathe admirably, giving his actors room for meaty monologues and the audience room to digest what they’re recording. It helps that the cast is chock full of excellent performances, including Flanagan’s longtime collaborator and wife Kate Siegel and Rahul Kohli (iZombie) as the Muslim sheriff of the deeply Catholic community. —PV

midnight fair can be viewed on Netflix.

The Terror

FX’s anthology horror series now has multiple seasons, but I’m here to particularly recommend the first, which made our list of best new TV shows of 2018. An adaptation of Dan Simmons’ novel, which in turn is a supernatural adaptation of the real-life events surrounding Captain Sir John Franklin’s disastrous Arctic expedition in the 1840’s, The Terror is a tense and low-key journey into the frigidest part of the world, chronicling a group of people who absolutely lose their composure. Featuring terrific leads from Jared Harris, Ciarán Hinds and Tobias Menzies, immaculately constructed suspense and lavishly designed sets to die for. The Terror is a favorite of Polygon employees for good reason. —PV

The Terror can be viewed on Hulu.

infernal

Yeon Sang-ho (Train to Busan, psychokinesis) absolutely delivered with this dark fantasy show straight to Netflix about some mysterious brawny guys who show up and beat the crap out of random people. infernal is most interesting when it comes to how humans try to rationalize the irrational: the presence of these mysterious life forms leads to a cult believing them to be righteous beings sent to punish sinners. The truth, of course, is not so simple. —PV

infernal can be viewed on Netflix.

black summer

An offshoot of Z nationfor my money black summer is the best zombie show on tv. Co-designed by John Hyams (Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning, Alone), who directs many episodes, the immersive atmosphere black summer takes you straight into this zombified world with a ground level view of humans just trying to survive. My best seller: It’s a deeply human zombie show helmed by a top-notch film director, with plenty of tense and spooky moments to give you what you’ve come to expect from the genre. —PV

black summer can be viewed on Netflix.

Hannibal

Hannibal is not just one of the best horror series of all time, it’s one of the best shows was ever made. Showrunner Bryan Fuller’s surprisingly violent, poetic, and suspenseful reimagining of Thomas Harris’ Hannibal Lecter novels takes what could have been a routine box office and instead delivers a subversively human take on its lurid subject matter.

what does Hannibal so scary – and beautiful – is the way it puts empathy front and center. Will Graham (Hugh Dancy), the criminal profiler at the heart of the series, is so good at his job it scares him. dr Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen) is the psychiatrist he is sent to work with, unaware that the good doctor is also a cannibalistic murderer. The back and forth of the relationship between the two, when their status quo is blasted and reset with shocking regularity, is what makes it so special Hannibal a thriller you can’t put down; The poetry of the way these men become metaphors when reflected in violence makes them transcendent. – Joshua Rivera

Hannibal can be viewed on Hulu or for free with ads on Plex.

The Exorcist

Image: fox

As Hannibal, The Exorcist expands on a popular film franchise in a way that looks cheap in passing. The Exorcist is one of the greatest horror films of all time, just as famous for its many copycats and sequels, most of which do not live up to the original. But for those few that have seen it, Fox’s 2016 sequel series The Exorcist deserved the name.

Beautifully photographed and justifiably frightening, Jeremy Slater’s sequel doesn’t reinvent the wheel as much as it does to take every possible measure to make that wheel meaningful. each of The ExorcistFocusing primarily on the hauntings of a single family, the two seasons of will anchor the spiritual horror of fathers Tomas Ortega and Marcus Keane (Alfonso Herrera and Ben Daniels) as they wrestle with what evil really looks like. —JR

The Exorcist can be viewed on Hulu and Prime Video.

Marianne

The French horror series Marianne is easily one of the scariest shows to grace Netflix since it premiered in 2019. Created by writer-director Samuel Bodin, the series follows Emma Larsimon, a self-destructive but successful horror writer who is haunted by her memories of Marianne. a malicious witch who claimed the lives of her friends and terrorized her small town. When Marianne, who has possessed the body of one of Emma’s friends, returns to haunt her, Emma must return to her hometown to put an end to the witch’s cursed existence once and for all. The real star of the series is Mireille Herbstmeyer, whose salacious look and performance is both deeply disturbing and masterfully menacing. – Toussaint Egan

Marianne can be viewed on Netflix.

The Twilight Zone

When it comes to sci-fi horror tv anthologies, The Twilight Zone just can’t be beat (sorry, The Outer Limits). Rod Serling’s original series, which aired on CBS for five seasons from 1959 to 1964, is packed with iconic stories that speak to the unique zeitgeist of paranoia, insecurity and societal change of her era. With cultural touchstones like the William Shatner-led “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” the apocalyptic tragedy “Time Enough at Last,” the dystopian drama “The Obsolete Man,” and the psychological terror of “Five Characters in Search of an Exit”—a my personal favorite episodes – there’s a reason for that The Twilight Zone has endured for so long: there really is something for every sci-fi and horror fan in this series. —TE

The Twilight Zone can be viewed on Paramount Plus, and two seasons are available for free with advertising on Pluto TV.