3 Horror TV Shows That Deliver Chills From Start To Finish

Horror TV shows are harder to nail than horror movies and television in other genres, but these three series are excellent from start to finish. Horror television can be tricky to pull off. Even series with excellent source material, actors, and the support of streamers can fail. Often, they start off great, then backslide hard.

It’s the nature of the genre. Horror can only stay frightening for so long. It relies so much on tension and on buildup that if the story goes on for more than a couple of episodes, eventually that tension will need to be alleviated, and some story points will need to be moved forward. You can’t exactly do experimental horror for 3+ hours.

So for a horror TV show to succeed from pilot to finale, it’s going to have something more than just scares. Or, if the series is highly dependent on frightening its audience, it had better be truly terrifying. These three horror shows are steeped in the genre, pulling from all corners, and they end as perfectly as they started.

Lovecraft Country (2020)

Adapted from Matt Ruff’s 2016 novel of the same name, Lovecraft Country is not based on any of H.P. Lovecraft’s stories, though it does feature some of the horror icon’s monstrous imagery. Instead, the series follows Tic (Jonathan Majors) and Leti (Jurnee Smollett), two friends from Chicago who set off across Jim Crow America to find Tic’s father.

Instead, they find two kinds of horror. One is of the Lovecraftian variety, and they bring that back home with them, causing death and fear as they do. The other sort of horror is one they’ve never been able to escape, the racist kind that infects every aspect of their lives and at times presents more peril than a shoggoth.

Lovecraft Country is almost closer to an anthology than a straight story, with each episode centering on some new dimension of horror, abuse, or prejudice. There’s still a powerful throughline, though, in the series that will keep you coming back for more. If it doesn’t, the amazing visuals and bloody kills certainly will.

Marianne (2019)

Marianne is a little-known French horror series that premiered on Netflix in 2019, and though it was canceled before season 2, the first season still serves as one of the scariest TV shows ever. Set in the French countryside, Marianne follows best-selling author Emma Larsimon (Victoire Du Bois), who decides she’s done writing horror.

While visiting her hometown, Emma is confronted by a friend from her childhood, Caroline (Anna Lemarchand). Caroline brings a strange story to Emma, stating that Caroline’s elderly mother believes she is “Marianne”, the witch from Emma’s books. Strange and increasingly horrifying events soon follow Emma as she uncovers the truth.

Marianne is the rare horror series that manages to string along the scares and the tension for the entire season, never taking its foot off the gas pedal. There is some of the most frightening imagery you’re going to find in a horror TV show in Marianne, and some scenes and faces will stay with you as you’re falling asleep.

Midnight Mass (2021)

Mike Flanagan’s third horror series, made for Netflix, Midnight Mass, is arguably his best, though some will always hold his first, The Haunting of Hill House, just a hair higher. Midnight Mass is a seven-episode miniseries set on the remote, fictional island of Crockett. Once a lovely, thriving destination, it’s since slid into irrelevancy.

It’s not that the people on Crockett are poor, though they certainly aren’t rich; it’s that the world has moved on, leaving them alone on their lookout. Industry has gone, young people have moved, and the ties that bind the community have weakened. Then, miraculously, a new, young priest arrives with a gift for his flock.

Midnight Mass is a beautiful, classically gothic horror tale about redemption, fear, and forgiveness. It’s fantastically atmospheric, and the only show (or movie) that has ever gotten close to Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot. It’s a story as much about an unknown creature as it is about a group of people more afraid of being forgotten than they are of dying.