The best horror shows to watch on Netflix and other streaming services

Who doesn’t love a good spooky story?

Here at Polygon, we’re frequently updating our list of the best horror movies you can watch on streaming services at home. What about horror television shows? You’re in luck, dear reader.

Supernatural thrillers, fictional adaptions of real spooky stories, and an under-the-radar pick for the best zombie show on TV — we’ve pulled together this list of terrific horror TV you can watch at home. We haven’t included shows that have strong horror elements but are not strictly horror all the way through, like Twin PeaksYou can also watch it on Showtime Doom Patrol This video is available on HBO Max. It is Twin Peaks a horror show? That’s up to you to decide. What isn’t up for debate is that it rules, just like the shows we’ve listed below.

Have other favourites that we haven’t included? Please let us know by leaving comments

The evil

Photo: Elizabeth Fisher/Paramount Plus

Robert King (TV power couple) and Michelle King created one the greatest network dramas ever to grace the airwaves. The Good Wife. Ten years and many changes later, the serial of spiritual terror thriller is back on TV. The evil.

The evil The story follows the adventures of a team of investigators investigating paranormal phenomena. Each has a different view. Kristen Bouchard, a forensic psychologist, is also a skeptical, David Acosta, (Mike Colter), is an aspirant priest who believes in the paranormal, while Ben Shakir (Aasif Madvi) does not believe that any of these things are real. By the way, their employer is also the Catholic church.

Many elements can make a difference. The evil It was so delicious. It’s a true serial television show in a world filled with long movies disguised as TV; it has a fantastic cast led by the delightful Herbers and a very cheeky Michael Emerson as the central antagonist; and the Kings’ sense of humor shines through silly gags (including The Pop-Up Book of Terrifying Things, which announces each episode’s title) that balance out the show’s darker subject matter.

But The evil isn’t only a breezy TV show — it’s legitimately unsettling. Instead of following the spiritual terror path laid out by The ExorcistWhere the horrors inherent in Catholic mythology are explicit real The evil Instead, he intelligently turns to agonisticism and rarely gives you an answer as to whether the vision was just or supernatural. It’s weird. Uncertainty is one the greatest flavors of horror. —Pete Volk

The evilParamount Plus allows you to view it.

Midnight Mass

Image courtesy of Netflix

Mike Flanagan (Doctor SleepThe creator of several Netflix horror-themed series, ), has another coming out in 2019. The Midnight Club. I’ve heard great things about his first two, Haunting of Hill House Haunting of Bly manorHowever, Midnight Mass is the only one I’ve made time for. It rules, let’s just say that.

Midnight Mass It takes place in a small New England town, which is strongly Catholic and conservative. After a terrible incident in his past, Zach Gilford returns home to try to make a new life for himself. Meanwhile, the town’s longtime priest goes missing, and a mysterious young man (Hamish Linklater) arrives to take his place. The town is quickly captivated by the young man’s charisma, and I’ll just go ahead and let you find out the rest!

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

Midnight Mass You can watch it on Netflix.

The Terror

AMC

FX’s anthology horror series now has multiple seasons, but I’m here to recommend the first one in particular, which made our list of the best new TV shows of 2018. An adaptation of Dan Simmons’ novel, which in turn is a supernatural adaptation of the real events surrounding Captain Sir John Franklin’s disastrous Arctic expedition in the 1840s, The Terror It is a dramatic and contained journey to some of the most dangerous parts of the planet and tells the story of a group that has lost it all. With terrific leading performances by Jared Harris, Ciarán Hinds, and Tobias Menzies, impeccably built tension, and intricately designed sets to die for, The Terror Polygon’s favorite Polygon employee is for good reasons. —PV

The TerrorYou can watch it on Hulu.

Hellbound

Photo: Jung Jaegu/Netflix

Yeon SanghoBusan: Train, PsychokinesisThis dark fantasy series about mysterious, beefy men who appear to pummel random people is a complete surprise. Hellbound It is most fascinating when it deals about the way humans attempt to rationalize the absurd. The existence of mysterious life forms can lead to a cult that believes these strange beings are just and sent to punish sinners. It isn’t that easy. —PV

HellboundYou can watch it on Netflix.

Black Summer

Image courtesy of Netflix

The spinoff from Z NationFor my money: Black Summer This is one of the most popular zombie shows on TV. John Hyams, co-creator (Day of Reckoning: Universal Soldier,All by YourselfThe immersive atmosphere created by Black Summer This film takes you into the zombified world, giving you a close-up view of ordinary people trying to survive. My quick sell: It’s a deeply human zombie show directed by a highly capable movie director, with plenty of tense and scary moments to give you what you want from the genre. —PV

Black Summer You can watch it on Netflix.

Hannibal

Image: NBC

Hannibal isn’t just one of the best horror series ever made, it’s one of the best Shows The best ever. Showrunner Bryan Fuller’s surprisingly violent, poetic, and thrilling reimagining of Thomas Harris’ Hannibal Lecter novels takes what might have been a rote brand cash-in and instead delivers a subversively humane take on its lurid subject.

How do you make it work? Hannibal so frightening — and beautiful — is the way that it centers empathy. Will Graham (Hugh Dancy), who is the main criminal profiler, is so skilled at what he does that it scares the hell out of him. Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen) is the psychiatrist he’s assigned to work with, unaware that the good doctor is also a cannibalistic murderer. What makes it so compelling is their relationship. Their status quo gets blown up, and then reset with astonishing regularity. Hannibal a thriller you can’t put down; the poetry of the way these men become metaphors as they see themselves reflected in violence is what makes it transcendent. —Joshua Rivera

Hannibal It is free to view on Hulu, or with ads on Plex.

The Exorcist

Fox Image

Similar Hannibal The ExorcistExpands upon a well-known film franchise but does so in a manner that appears cheap. The Exorcist is one of the greatest horror films ever made, one equally famous for its many imitators and sequels, most of which can’t sniff the original. But to the few who saw it, Fox’s 2016 sequel series The Exorcist He was worthy of his name.

Beautifully shot and legitimately frightening, Jeremy Slater’s sequel doesn’t reinvent the wheel as much as it works to take every measure it can to give that wheel meaning. Each one The Exorcist’s two seasons largely focuses around a single family’s haunting, anchoring 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 It is also available on Hulu, Prime Video and YouTube.

Marianne

Image courtesy of Netflix

French horror series MarianneIt is undoubtedly one of Netflix’s most frightening shows since its 2019 debut. The series is directed by Samuel Bodin and follows Emma Larsimon. Emma, who is a successful horror writer but has a debilitating past, suffers from nightmares about Marianne, a wicked witch who terrorized her town. When Marianne, having possessed the body of one of Emma’s friends, returns to haunt her, Emma must journey back to her hometown in order to put an end to the witch’s cursed existence once and for all. Mireille Herbstmeyer is the real star of this series. Her leering eyes and performance are both deeply disturbing and wonderfully ominous. —Toussaint Egan

Marianne You can watch it on Netflix.

The Twilight Zone

CBS Television

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, uncertainty, and societal change of their era. With cultural touchstones like the William Shatner-led “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” the apocalyptic tragedy of “Time Enough at Last,” the dystopian drama of “The Obsolete Man,” and the psychological terror of “Five Characters in Search of an Exit” — one of my personal favorite episodes — there’s a reason why The Twilight ZoneThis series has been around for so many years: It truly offers something for everyone. —TE

The Twilight ZoneParamount Plus offers the full season, as well as two episodes for no charge with ads on Pluto TV.