16 SUPER CREEPY SHOWS FOR YOUR SPOOKY SEASON SPIRAL
So much evil, so little time. Luckily, I’ve put together a watchlist for whenever you’re in the mood for a good squeal, a few involuntary glances over your shoulder, or the kind of plot twist that has you checking the locks before bed.
We’ve got haunted towns, hot vampires, murderous babies, workplace horror, cults, monsters, and more than a few situations that should've come with a warning sign. Basically, 16 excellent reasons to wreck your sleep schedule this spooky season. So have a scroll, queue your favorites, and watch at your own risk.
Stream on: HBO Max
The house is gorgeous, minimalist, and suspiciously affordable. The catch? Its architect has an extensive list of rules for anyone who lives there. Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s The Girl Before is what happens when Architectural Digest energy meets “girl, get out of that house.”
Stream on: Hulu/Disney+
Being the only Black woman in your office is already horror enough. Then Nella finally gets a Black coworker and somehow that isn’t the relief it should be. The Other Black Girl takes all the tiny indignities of being Black in a very white workplace and asks, what if the microaggressions are part of something much more sinister?
Stream on: Amazon Prime
Dre loves her favorite pop star more than you love anything, and unfortunately for everyone around her, she means that very literally. Dominique Fishback is terrifyingly good in Swarm, a dark, surreal trip through stan culture, obsession, identity, and the increasingly horrifying places devotion can take you.
Stream on: Amazon Prime
Dolores gets out of prison after 16 years and returns to a Washington Heights that has completely moved on without her. One basement massage business and a suddenly thriving empanada shop later, things get very bloody. Think Sweeney Todd with gentrification anxiety and significantly better seasoning.
Stream on: Netflix
Yes, the vampires are hot. Unfortunately, they're also absolute disasters. Interview With the Vampire takes Anne Rice’s gothic melodrama and turns it into a lush, bloody story about love, obsession, resentment, immortality, and what happens when the worst relationship of your life can technically last forever.
Rent on: Amazon Prime
Jordan Peele’s revival understands the basic Twilight Zone rule: start with something normal, push it two inches to the left, and suddenly reality feels deeply wrong. The anthology format also means you can bounce between aliens, eerie technology, strange coincidences, social horror, and whatever particular flavor of existential crisis you’re in the mood for that night.
Stream on: HBO Max
Natasha does not want children. So naturally, a baby quite literally drops into her life and refuses to leave. The Baby takes the anxiety of unwanted responsibility to its most deranged possible conclusion, complete with a mysteriously indestructible infant, several suspicious deaths, and the growing possibility that there might be something wrong with this baby.
Stream on: Hulu/Disney+
Niecy Nash-Betts plays a detective investigating a string of murders so elaborate and gruesome they practically qualify as installation art. There's nuns, religious imagery, family trauma, and enough deeply upsetting crime scenes to make you reconsider eating while you watch. Also, Ryan Murphy's involved, so don't expect subtlety.
Stream on: Netflix
A single mom has an affair with her married boss and befriends his wife, which is already a deeply questionable arrangement. Then astral projection gets involved and... You know what, the less you know going in, the better. Just understand that whatever ending you think you’ve figured out, you probably haven’t.
Stream on: HBO Max
Monsters are one thing. Monsters while driving through Jim Crow America are another. Lovecraft Country throws Jurnee Smollett, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Wunmi Mosaku, and a very game ensemble into haunted houses, secret societies, magic, body horror, and a new flavor of horror waiting around almost every corner.
Steam on: Apple TV
LaKeith Stanfield stars in a love story about new parenthood that slowly curdles into something much darker. The Changeling pulls from fairy tales, folklore, grief, and the particularly unsettling feeling of discovering that the story you thought you were living is not the story you’re actually in.
Stream on: HBO Max
A child is murdered, the evidence points overwhelmingly to one man, and there’s just one problem: equally convincing evidence proves he was somewhere else. What starts as a grim crime procedural slowly lets something supernatural crawl in around the edges. And investigators (and you) start to question everything they believe in.
Stream on: Netflix
A guy gets paid an obscene amount of money to restore a bunch of damaged videotapes in a creepy building in the middle of nowhere. Obviously, nothing good comes from this. Archive 81 starts as a mystery and keeps getting stranger until you’re dealing with cults, séances, alternate dimensions, and the creeping realization that maybe he should’ve just quit on day one.
Stream on: Amazon Prime
The Emory family moves into an all-white LA suburb in the 1950s hoping for a fresh start. Instead they get terror coming at them from practically every direction. The show takes place over ten episodes, and just 10 days, as the family spends each of those days being tortured beyond belief by unimaginable horrors, both real and supernatural. It's a fun time.
Stream on: HBO Max
Something is deeply wrong in Derry. Set in 1962, Welcome to Derry follows a new group of kids and a Black Air Force family newly stationed in town as disappearances, military secrets, and Derry’s very old evil start closing in. Turns out the clown is only part of what this town has been hiding.
Stream on: MGM+
Imagine taking the wrong exit and ending up in a town you literally can't leave. Now add creatures that look human, come out after dark, and are very determined to have you for dinner. From has the addictive quality of a mystery-box show and the stress level of realizing sunset is in ten minutes and nobody has locked the windows.
Feeling brave? Find peak screams in my scariest horror movies of all time. In the meantime, happy horrific bingeing!
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