10 Horror TV Shows Scarier Than Any Film

It sometimes seems like horror is a genre uniquely suited to the world of cinema screens and the limited runtimes of theatrical movies. Despite the success of megahits like The Walking Dead and Netflix’s sci-fi horror hybrids such as Charlie Brooker’s satirical anthology Black Mirror and eighties nostalgia-fest Stranger Things, most TV horror has more DNA in common with character dramas than standard horror flicks.

Maybe it’s because TV’s budgets are too small to cover horror’s many monsters; maybe it’s because, as Bret Easton Ellis once argued in conversation with horror super producer Jason Blum, the genre is generally at its best when the central threat is somewhat unexplained and ambiguous—a big ask on television, a medium whose episodic nature means every story needs to be wrapped up in order for the next plot to proceed.

Whatever the case, horror television shows rarely receive the rave reviews and cult success that their sci-fi cousins manage, meaning many superb series go under the radar of most casual viewers. With that in mind, this is a list of ten television offerings scarier than anything at the multiplex for you to watch at your leisure—presumably through shivering fingers.

“From the creator of Glee” is not a phrase many horror fans expect to be delighted by, but between the campy guilty pleasure silliness of the short-lived Scream Queens and this darker (though no less campy) anthology horror series, Ryan Murphy is quietly becoming one of TV’s foremost gorehounds.

Following a new, often surreal and always scary story each season, American Horror Story is undeniably inconsistent, but the often-overlapping ensemble cast of the series can’t be faulted (shout out to the always great and endlessly versatile Kathy Bates).

Nor can the show’s tireless commitment to surreal and strange scares, with some of the show’s stronger offerings such as Cult, Asylum, and 1984 being genuinely terrifying televisual experiences.