31 Best Horror TV Shows on Streaming Services
Gathered here are the scariest and most bingeable horror shows that the streaming world has to offer.
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Horror and television have always been a bit of an awkward fit. What’s scary and what’s bingeable are often mutually exclusive. Horror requires that you suspend your disbelief and the longer it asks of your attention span, the higher the risk that the tension wanes.
Still, in the modern streaming era, there are plenty of horror TV shows that get the spooky job done. Gathered on Netflix, Prime Video, Hulu, HBO Max, Apple TV+, Paramount+, and more are some truly great streaming options to elevate the heart rate. Here we’ve compiled the very best of the best. What follows are the 31 best streaming horror TV shows.
American Horror Story
Available on: Prime Video (U.S.), Hulu (U.S.), Disney+ (U.K.)
Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story is revolutionary in quite a few ways. Not only did it help usher in a renewed era of anthology storytelling on television, it also was arguably the most successful television horror show since The X-Files.
Like all anthologies, American Horror Story has its better seasons (season 1 a.k.a. Murder House, season 2 a.k.a. Asylum, season 6 a.k.a. Roanoke) and its worse (season 3 a.k.a. Coven and season 8 a.k.a. Apocalypse). Still, for 10 years and counting, American Horror Story has been one of the go-to options for TV horror fans.
Ash vs Evil Dead
Available on: Netflix
Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead series (consisting of Evil Dead, Evil Dead II, and Army of Darkness) are some of the most deliriously bloody and fun slasher films ever committed to celluloid. Surely, however, a TV series made decades later couldn’t possibly bring the same level of thrill, could it?
Wrong! Starz’s Ash vs Evil Dead is another installment of fantastic comedy horror. Bruce Campbell returns as Evil Dead hero Ash Williams, who has done seemingly little with his life since battling the forces of evil (and dead) 30 years ago. That all changes when the dead walk once again and Ash, and some new friends must pick up the chainsaw once again.
Black Summer
Available on: Netflix
In a zombie television landscape largely dominated by AMC’s The Walking Dead, Syfy’s Z Nation found a niche with a more playful, tongue-in-cheek presentation of the zombie apocalypse. In this spinoff, Black Summer, things get a touch darker.
Jamie King stars as Rose, a mother who is separated from her daughter during the height of a zombie apocalypse. Rose sets out on a mission to recover her and in the process builds a group of like-minded individuals looking for something they’ve lost.
Castle Rock
Available on: Hulu (U.S.), Starz (U.K.)
Stephen King properties have made their way to television before. There have been miniseries for classic King texts like The Stand and ‘Salem’s Lot and even full series for works like Rose Red and Under the Dome. Still, none of those series has had the audacity to adapt multiple aspects of the Stephen King universe itself…until Castle Rock.
Castle Rock takes multiple characters, storylines, and concepts from the vast works of Stephen King and puts them all in King’s own Castle Rock, Maine. The first season featured inmates from Shawshank prison, extended family of Jack Torrance, and maybe even a touch of the shine. The show then opened itself up for more storytelling possibilities in season 2, adopting an anthology format and bringing Annie Wilkes into the fold.
Castlevania
Available on: Netflix
Netflix has beefed up its anime offerings in recent years and one of the first IPs they mined to do so was atmospheric Konami videogame series Castlevania. Originally planned as a film, Castlevania makes good use of its serialized format to pick up the horror story from where it begins with 1989 game Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse.
And what a story it is. Wallachian lord (and vampire, obvs) Vlad Dracula Tepes (Graham McTavish) falls into a mighty rage after his wife is wrongly accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake. Vlad summons an army of the dead to declare war on the living of Wallachia. The only people who stand in his path are a ragged band of heroes led by Trevor Belmont (Richard Armitage).
Channel Zero
Available on: AMC+
We won’t lie to you: Channel Zero is a bit of a pain to find on streaming services. Currently the only place to access Syfy’s spooky series in the U.S. is on AMC+ (and only available for purchase on Prime Video in the U.K.). Still, Channel Zero might be worth the subscription alone. Though it never quite found a suitably sizable audience, Channel Zero is some of the best horror television since…ever?
Like many other shows on this list, Channel Zero is an anthology, with each new season adapting a different “creepypasta” from internet lore. Unlike many of the other shows on this, however, every single new story presented on Channel Zero is an absolute banger. The monster creations on this show are the stuff of legitimate nightmares. When combined with the steadfast scary storytelling sensibilities from its capable crew of writers, it makes for one hell of a horror experience.
Chucky
Available on: Peacock (U.S.), Sky Go (U.K.)
Pencil Chucky into the increasingly lengthy television category of “stuff that shouldn’t work but somehow does.” Featuring the iconic creepy doll character from the Child’s Play horror series, Chucky reworks itself into an episodic format far better than anyone might have expected.
Taking place four years after the events of Cult of Chucky, this series picks up with 14-year-old Jake Wheeler buying a spooky doll to use in an art project (because who would want to buy something that looks like Chucky for anything else?). Before you can say “your friend till the end” people start mysteriously dying. Chucky is a surprisingly deep bildungsroman that tackles heavy teenage topics while keeping the body count high.
The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina
Available on: Netflix
After the Archie comic universe got a gritty reboot in The CW’s Riverdale, it was only a matter of time before Archie cousin comic Sabrina the Teenage Witch got her turn. Thankfully Netflix stepped up to the plate with the Kiernan Shipka-starring Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and even more thankfully…it’s gritty as all hell.
Chilling Adventures of Sabrina brings witchcraft back to its absolutely metal satanic origins. Sabrina Spellman (Shipka) is like any teenager at Baxter High. She’s concerned about her grades, her social status, and her impending 16th birthday in which she must undergo a dark ritual in which she’ll have to grant her loyalty to the Dark Lord Satan. Such is life for a half-mortal/half-witch.
Evil
Available on: Paramount+ (U.S.), Virgin TV Go (U.K.)
Ever since The X-Files went off the air in 2002 (and then again in 2016 and again in 2018), network television has struggled to find a suitably creepy paranormal procedural. That all changed in 2019 when CBS debuted the preposterously pulpy and entertainingly eerie Evil. Granted, CBS bumped Evil over to streaming quarantine with future seasons being hosted on Paramount+. But network television’s loss is the streaming world’s gain.
Evil centers on a trio of experts who investigate supposed miracles, possessions, and all other manner of spooky phenomena for the Catholic Church. Priest-in-training David Acosta (Mike Colter) is a devout believer in demons. Tech expert Ben Shakir (Aasif Mandvi) is a devout skeptic. Forensic psychologist Kristen Bouchard (Katja Herbers) is devoutly in the middle. Those fascinating group dynamics play out on a case-of-the-week format that also makes room for a series-long exploration on the nature of true evil.
The Exorcist
Available on: Hulu (U.S.), Prime Video (U.K.)
The Exorcist is one of the greatest horror films ever made. The Fox series that bears its name and premise isn’t quite as good (few things could ever be) but it’s still an excellent horror story in its own right.
The Exorcist is a two-season long anthology series that follows two different cases of demonic possession. In the first installment, two Catholic priests assist a woman with a possession in her home. In the second, two new priests help a young girl battle evil.
The Fades
Available on: Prime Video (U.S.), Hulu (U.S.), BBC iPlayer (U.K.)
The Fades is the story of Paul (Iain de Caestecker), a teenager who can see dead people. A fracture in the ascension process between life and death has left Earth populated by wandering wraiths, who are growing angrier and more vengeful with every passing year. When the Fades discover a way to take revenge on the living, a group called the Angelics has to stop them.
It’s witty, human, touching, thrilling and soaked in horror, from its creature designs to its chilling tension. And what a cast! Daniel Kaluuya! Natalie Dormer! Tom ‘Lucifer’ Ellis! Joe ‘Gendry’ Dempsie! It’s such a well-drawn series that even with the premature ending, it’s still very much worth the watch.
Folklore
Available on: HBO Max
HBO’s 2019 series Folklore is based on a novel concept. HBO Asia has access to some of the best horror storytellers in the East. Why not give them carte blanche to tell the horrifying stories they want to tell in an anthology format?
Folklore features episodes from filmmakers based in Indonesia, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, and South Korea. Each installment is unique to that country’s sensibilities and also entirely terrifying.
Hammer House of Horror
Available on: Peacock (U.S.), BritBox (U.K.)
Hammer Film Productions is one of the most iconic horror movie studios ever. Since the middle of the 20th century, the British production company churned out dozens of horror films that featured iconic characters like Frankenstein, Dracula, the Mummy, and more. It’s only natural then that after dominating one horror medium in film, Hammer would turns its ghastly eye to television.
Airing over one season series in 1980, Hammer House of Horror presented 13 (BOO!) self-contained episodes that ran the gamut from werewolves to witches. Each individual hour has its own charms but “The House That Bled to Death” is the one that really hammered home Hammer’s vision of televised terror.
Hannibal
Assigned to: Hulu (U.S.), Prime Video (U.K.)
For those who like their horror with a healthy dose of blood (no like, really: A HEAPING dose of blood) look further than Hannibal. Despite its genteel network origins, NBC’s adaptation of Thomas Harris’s iconic character is one of the bloodiest and most disturbing properties ever presented on American television.
Mads Mikkelsen stars as Dr. Hannibal Lecter: a therapist, gourmand, and secret cannibal. Hugh Dancy stars as Will Graham, the criminal profiler who would end up ensnared in the title character’s evil web. Thanks to the chemistry between the two leads and the wonderfully violent stories dreamed up by showrunner Bryan Fuller, the show developed a big fandom that is still waiting for (or rather demanding) a fourth season today.
The Haunting of Hill House
Available on: Netflix
Shirley Jackson’s novel The Haunting of Hill House is considered one of the most important texts in the horror literature canon. It’s only fitting then that it’s Hill House that Netflix turned to when the time came to make its first big original horror series. It’s also fitting that they turned to Hush director Mike Flanagan to make it happen.
Flanagan’s version of The Haunting of Hill House is quite different from the novel from which it takes its name. This Haunting is a modern story that follows the Crain family as they try to recover from the trauma they sustained as kids living in the terrifying Hill House. Of course, Hill House is still out there just dying to call them all back home.
The Haunting of Bly Manor
Available on: Netflix
The consensus is that The Haunting of Bly Manor is significantly less scary than Mike Flanagan’s original Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House…and that consensus is correct. But there are still plenty of scares to be had in this worthy followup.
Bly Manor borrows elements from the works of Henry James, including The Turn of the Screw, to craft another affecting ghost story. Hill House‘s Victoria Pedretti returns as Dani, a young American woman who takes on a job as a governess to two young children at the titular Bly Manor. Soon Dani and all involved will come to find that Bly Manor holds some serious (weirdly romantic) secrets.
Lisey’s Story
Available on: Apple TV+
Despite the success of shows like For All Mankind and Ted Lasso, Apple TV+ remains a little further down the streaming TV dial than its competitors. One certainly can’t blame it then for tapping into the same well that has served so many other networks capably: a Stephen King adaptation.
Based on a novel by the horror maestro himself, Lisey’s Story stars Julianne Moore as Lisey Landon, a recently widowed who uncovers some traumatic memories about her marriage to her husband (Clive Owen). While not one of the best-ever King take, Lisey’s Story is able to maintain a sense of tension for eight increasingly spooky episodes.
Lovecraft Country
Available on: HBO Max (U.S.), Sky Go (U.K.)
Classic horror literature is largely dominated by white voices and white characters. HBO’s bold adaptation of the book Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff, seeks to seamlessly insert some Black voices and characters into the historical horror canon.
To that end Jonathan Majors and Jurnee Smollett star as Atticus “Tic” Freeman and Letitia “Leti” Lewis – two Black Chicagoans discovering dark magic in 1950s America. The plot is structured as a sort-of anthology with Tic, Leti, and their friends and family dealing with the supernatural weekly while also engaged with the machinations of the ancient Braithwhite family. With a deep appreciation of monsters, both real and imagined, Lovecraft Country is worthwhile horror programming.
Marianne
Available on: Netflix
This eight-episode series about a successful writer who, having bled her teenage nightmares for book material, now faces its real-life return was warmly received by horror fans on its arrival in 2019. The eight-episode first season (sadly, it wasn’t renewed for a second) is packed with classic scares which, though familiar, were handled extremely well. The French setting added a new element for UK and US viewers more used to seeing such hauntings play out in English.
Created by Quoc Dang Tran and Samuel Bodin, the undeniably scary Marianne stars Call Me By Your Name’s Victoire Du Bois as hit novelist Emma Larsimon, but it’s undeniably the face of Mireille Herbstmeyer as Madame Daugeron you’ll be seeing in your own nightmares.
Midnight Mass
Available on: Netflix
Starting with The Haunting of Hill House in 2018, it’s become something of a quasi-yearly tradition for Netflix to release a new spooky series from horror auteur Mike Flanagan in time for Halloween. 2021’s offering was Midnight Mass, an unsettling seven-episode outing that would prove to be Flanagan’s most personal (and ultimately his favorite).
Midnight Mass is an examination of faith, grief, and community. Set on a sparsely-populated working class island, the show picks up when a mysterious preacher man, Father Paul Hill (Hamish Linklater) comes to town. Soon enough, Father Paul is able to perform things that seem like miracles. But are they? And also: have you ever noticed how the biblical description of angels sounds like … well, you just have to watch it.
The Outsider
Available on: HBO Max (U.S.), Sky Go (U.K.)
Stephen King is among the most adapted authors of all time. And yet, even after all this time, the King canon is able to produce some surprises. HBO’sThe Outsider, based on a 2018 King novel of the same name and developed for television by The Night Of‘s Richard Price, is one such pleasant surprise.
The genius of this story is how it first presents as a true crime tale, with little league coach Terry Maitland (Jason Bateman) being arrested for the unspeakably violent murder of a local boy. But as Detective Ralph Anderson (Ben Mendelsohn) looks further into the case, he discovers there might be a supernatural force at play. The Outsider deftly delves into themes of belief, skepticism, and family, all the while asking viewers “how long would it take for you give in and believe the unbelievable?”
The Purge
Available on: Peacock (U.S.), Prime Video (U.K.)
Thanks to NBC and its affiliated networks getting their pick of the Universal movie catalogue, Peacock is home to a surprising number of horror movie TV adaptations. Among the best of them is USA Network’s The Purge. Through two action-packed seasons on cable television, The Purge got to take the film franchise’s already big premise and expand it into parts unknown.
For the uninitiated, The Purge takes place in an alternate history United States where during one 12-hour period a year all laws are suspended and citizens are encouraged to get their most malevolent energies out of their system. With some added narrative elbow room, the show not only got to explore the night of the Purge but the totalitarian systems in place that would let it happen to begin with.
The X-Files
Available on: Freevee (U.S.), Hulu (U.S.), Disney+ (U.K.)
The X-Files is quite simply the gold standard for horror on television. Chris Carter’s conspiracy-tinged supernatural masterpiece not only inspired every horror TV show that came after it, but just about every other TV show in general.
The X-Files follows FBI special agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) as they investigate the unusual cases that traditional law enforcement won’t touch. For 11 seasons (and a handful of movies), the show expertly balanced a massive series-long story along with what came to be called “monster of the week” self-contained tales.
Servant
Available on: Apple TV+
When Servant first premiered in 2019, Apple TV+ was understandably eager to publicize that M. Night Shyamalan produced the show. Despite the prolific horror movie director’s involvement, however, Servant isn’t quite pure horror per sé. But it is dark, grimy, unsettling as all hell, and occasionally even a little funny!
Servant follows Sean and Dorothy Turner, a wealthy Philadelphia couple who hire nanny Leanne Grayson to look after their infant son, Jericho. Thing is though – Jericho is not a child but a lifelike “reborn” doll the couple purchased to help cope with the loss of their real son. While that’s a creepy enough premise to begin with, Servant soon splinters off into some truly wild directions bringing cults, a touch of the supernatural, and a lot of incredible shots of food to the table.
Stan Against Evil
Available on: Hulu (U.S.), Prime Video (U.K.)
To parody horror, one needs to love horror. And Stan Against Evil creator Dana Gould really, really, really loves horror. The longtime standup comedian and comedy writer brings his unique humor sensibilities and lifelong appreciation of horror to tell the story of a quaint New Hampshire town that just happens to be built on the cursed site of a massive witch burning.
John C. McGinley stars as the titular Stan, a disgraced former sheriff who opts to pick up the battle against evil after a close call. He teams up with new sheriff Evie Barret (Janet Varney) to defend the town (and sometimes world) from supernatural threats.
Stranger Things
Available on: Netflix
It seems so obvious now but in hindsight there was little buzz about this nostalgic tweenage horror project on Netflix from the relatively unknown Duffer Brothers. Little did we know that the Stev(ph)ens Spielberg and King-inspired Stranger Things would be one of Netflix’s biggest hits.
Stranger Things takes place in the fictional Hawkins, Indiana in the mid-’80s. Hawkins is your typical smal ltown American city. The kids like to ride bikes, play Dungeons & Dragons, and tease one another. Unfortunately it also just happens to be home to a mysterious government building on the outskirts of town may have opened a portal to another world – a portal that will usher in multiple seasons worth of monster fighting mayhem.
Tales of the Unexpected
Available on: Freevee (U.S.) Sky Go (U.K.)
Not all horror involves demonic creatures and the supernatural; there’s evil enough in humankind to sustain years of chilling storytelling, which is just what Tales of the Unexpected exploited throughout its nine-series ITV run. Some of these half-hours did dip a toe into the paranormal (who could forget the plump infant reveal of ‘Royal Jelly’?), but they mostly showcase earthly corruption and domestic noir, like chilling child abduction tale ‘Flypaper’.
With 112 episodes in total, around a third were based on stories by Roald Dahl, whose name prefixed the title in the early years and who filmed fireside introductions teasing what was to follow. The nasty misanthropy of Dahl’s imagination is well-known to those who’ve read his children’s books, and it found full expression here with stories of revenge, lies, murder and cannibalism.
The Terror
Available on: Hulu (U.S.), Sky Go (U.K.)
Based on a 2007 book of the same name by Dan Simmons, The Terror season 1 tells a fictionalized account of Captain Sir John Franklin’s expedition to the arctic in 1845. In real life, the doomed men likely got lost and succumbed to the cold but the show asks “what if there was something more sinister than low temperatures lurking about?”
The Terror features a cast impressively full of “hey it’s that guy” guys like Jared Harris, Ciarán Hindis, and Tobias Menzes. It deftly turned itself into an anthology with the second season The Terror: Infamy that tells a ghost story within the setting of a Japanese interment camp in World War II.
Them
Available on: Prime Video
Premiering in April 2021, just half a year after Lovecraft Country‘s series finale, Them is another TV series that understands no embellishment is necessary when cataloguing the horrors of the Jim Crow era…but throwing a few supernatural terrors in there still helps.
This Prime Video series from Little Marvin and Lena Waithe follows the Emorys, a Black family in 1953 who moves from North Carolina to an all-white neighborhood in Los Angeles. While in the idyllic west, seemingly living out the idyllic American life, the family soon discovers that their home might be a gathering place for all manner of evil forces.
The Twilight Zone
Available on: Paramount+
The Twilight Zone is an all-time television classic for good reason. Join Rod Serling each episode for a new tale of mystery, horror and woe.
Whatever you do, however, do NOT drop your glasses.
Unsolved Mysteries
Available on: Netflix
Any reboot of continuation of the classic ’80s/’90s true crime series Unsolved Mysteries just needs one element to be considered authentic: that music. Thankfully, this modern iteration on Netflix maintains a version of the original’s haunting theme. Beyond that crucial aspect, Unsolved Mysteries honors the original by continuing the formula to great success.
Unsolved Mysteries remains largely a true crime enterprise. The show covers unexplained disappearances, murders, and crimes. But it also spends plenty of time with the truly unexplained: the paranormal. This reboot has covered UFOs and some tsunami ghosts. That, combined with the atmospheric music, makes this a suitably spooky watch.