The 13 Best Horror Shows to Watch on HBO Max, Netflix, Amazon, and More

What kind of strange, complex creatures are we that we literally enjoy terrorizing ourselves? Weirdos! If you must self-terrify, a great way to do that is to watch a horror TV series, obviously, but since horror is still a massive genre in film but not so much on TV, it's not as easy to find out what to watch. But if you know where to look, you can find plenty to watch from between your fingers, from classics like American Horror Story Season 1 to new scary shows like American Horror Story Season 10. (That show has been on for a long time.)

We've combed the biggest streaming services, like Netflix, HBO Max, and Hulu, and others that horror aficionados should subscribe to, like Shudder, to make a list of the best horror TV shows to watch right now. 

The Best Horror Shows to Watch Right Now 

American Horror Story

This isn't a blanket statement that every season of Ryan Murphy's anthology horror belongs on this list. Anyone who has seen it can tell you that consistency across the series — heck, even within seasons — isn't a strong point, but when American Horror Story is good, it's pretty danged good. Each season is a miniseries unto itself, but Murphy rotates a cast of regulars — including Sarah Paulson, Evan Peters, Jessica Lange, and Angela Bassett — in different roles. The first two seasons, Murder House and Asylum, are the show at its strongest, and the rest of the series is a mixed bag, but do check out Season 8, Apocalypse. -Tim Surette

Bates Motel

One of the fruits of the era when every cable network was making high-end scripted shows, this A&E horror drama based on Alfred Hitchcock's seminal slasher film Psycho was way better than it had any reason to be. Set in the present day, it told the origin story of serial killer Norman Bates (Freddie Highmore), who had a truly unhealthy relationship with his mother Norma (Vera Farmiga, who was Emmy-nominated in 2013 for her scarily locked-in performance), who did whatever she could to protect Norman from his own increasing homicidal urges and bail him out when she failed to do so. It ran for five strong seasons of psychological horror. -Liam Mathews

Chucky

You may not expect Chucky, a series continuation of the Child's Play horror film franchise, to be a sterling example of how to turn a movie into a streaming-era TV show, but it works extraordinarily well. The Syfy/USA Network series hails from franchise creator Don Mancini, and brings back the great Brad Dourif as the voice of Chucky, the doll possessed by the evil spirit of serial killer Charles Lee Ray. In the series, fate brings Chucky into the life of Jake Wheeler (Zackary Arthur), a bullied gay teen whom he tries to persuade to give in to his rage and become a killer like him. It's topically relevant without being heavy-handed or didactic, it's gory enough to satisfy slasher movie fans, it has a surprising amount of heart, and it's wickedly funny. -Liam Mathews      

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Channel Zero

This horror anthology series that began airing on Syfy back in 2016 came about when it was all the rage to mine the internet for content that could be adapted into a TV show, so it's OK if you dismissed it as another empty TV series. The truth is Channel Zero — whose stories are based on "creepypasta" (internet ghost stories, basically) — is one of horror television's best kept secrets, especially for those into disturbing imagery. As soon as you see the young creature made out of human teeth in Season 1, you'll know what I'm talking about. -Tim Surette     

Midnight Mass

You no longer have to debate if The Haunting of Hill House or The Haunting of Bly Manor is the best horror TV series created by Mike Flanagan, because the answer is Midnight Mass. Flanagan's third horror miniseries for Netflix is set on a small fishing island and dabbles in the concept of faith, particularly when viewed through the eyes of an almost cultish religious sect when a new pastor arrives. Things spiral into incredibly spooky spaces, with a twist you may already know about, but even knowing what's coming doesn't diminish the power of the bloodbath that follows. It's Flanagan's smartest and most gruesome series to date. -Tim Surette

Black Summer

Netflix's zombie show is the antithesis of The Walking Dead. As opposed to poetic mediations on humanity and morality, Black Summer is built solely on adrenaline and chaos. The series premiere drops viewers into the middle of the action, as a group of survivors in a zombie apocalypse must fight to make it from an evacuated suburb to a sports stadium where refugees are being taken to safety. While Jaime King is arguably the lead, you'll likely never bother to remember the name of her character, or anyone else's for that matter. But the thing about Black Summer is that this doesn't even matter! Both of the eight-episode seasons are fast-paced studies in mayhem, letting action do the talking and character building instead of rambling thoughts on survival. -Tim Surette 

Evil

Evil, which started on CBS before moving to Paramount+, is a show made by and for people who love television. This isn't a "seven-hour movie" broken up into bits; it's a horror procedural with serious range, created by Robert and Michelle King, the boundary-pushing husband-and-wife duo behind The Good Fight. The show follows a trio of investigators, played by Katja Herbers, Mike Colter, and Aasif Mandvi, who work for the Catholic Church investigating freaky cases. Exorcisms, cannibalism, elevators to Hell, online chat rooms, racist hospitals, demonic AR goggles — nothing is off the table, and nothing ever resolves cleanly. Each episode is a clever parable about what ails modern society, with a tone that's impossible to pin down, dancing from winking playfulness to the creeping sense that we're all already doomed. It's funny until it's terrifying. -Kelly Connolly

Slasher

Call it Canadian Horror Story. This anthology series from the Great White North tells a different gory murder mystery every season where a group of people try to figure out the identity of the masked killer preying on them before he gets them all. It's a classic slasher movie setup expanded to the length of a whole TV season. This means the audience gets to know the victims better than they do in a typical slasher. Not every standalone season is on the same level of quality; of the three that are on Netflix, the third, 2019's Solstice, is the best, as it mixes its scares with astute social commentary. But every season has a twisty mystery and bloody kills that slasher movie fans will get a kick out of. A fourth season, which came out in 2021, is available on the horror-focused streaming service Shudder. -Liam Mathews    

Penny Dreadful

Even the jump scares are literary on Showtime's underrated Penny Dreadful, a tastefully gory gothic horror about the ways alienation makes monsters of us all. Eva Green stars as a powerful medium, Vanessa Ives, who's so supernaturally tormented that even the devil is desperate to make her his prize. While fighting for her soul, she keeps company with Victorian public domain characters like Victor Frankenstein (Harry Treadaway), Dracula (Christian Camargo), and Dorian Gray (Reeve Carney), and romances a gun-slinging American werewolf played by Josh Hartnett. A pulpy, theatrical Grand Guginol packed with haunting creatures and ornate monologues, the show is pulled together by the singularity of creator John Logan's vision and the strength of its cast. Green's ferocious performance is unmissable. -Kelly Connolly

Marianne

This French horror series didn't get a lot of attention when it was released in 2019, but those who saw it know it was one of the most terrifying things on TV that year. Emma (Victoire Du Bois) is a horror writer who returns to her small hometown and discovers that a witch who tormented her in her past and became the subject of her books is alive in the real world. But you won't be watching for the plot; Marianne has some truly paralyzing scares, mixing the slow-building tension of horror as an art with the cheap thrills of jump scares for a show that hits from all angles and keeps you unnerved. It's creepy in all the good ways. Unfortunately, one season is all we're getting. Despite positive reviews, Marianne was canceled. –Tim Surette

30 Coins

30 Coins is another international horror series that wasn't a huge hit, but it did develop a cult fanbase among those who discovered this Spanish HBO Max gem. The show follows a totally swole priest who's escaping his past in a small town, the town's image-conscious mayor, and the town's feisty veterinarian as they contend with supernatural phenomena that are related to a coin that the priest owns, which might be one of the coins that Judas betrayed Jesus with. It's got monsters, oversized babies, and unexpected laughs. -Tim Surette         

The Haunting of Hill House

We weren't too high on Mike Flanagan's The Haunting of Bly Manor, but the miniseries that preceded it, The Haunting of Hill House, remains one of the best horror shows you can watch on Netflix. Hill House follows a dysfunctional family across two time periods: when the kids are young and the family first moves into Hill House, and years later when the kids are grown up (and effed up) and reconvene back at the haunted house. It's more of a psychological thriller and family drama than others on this list, but it does some cool things with ghosts — like its series of hidden haunts that eagle-eyed viewers have to search for — and has one of TV's most harrowing sequences in the near-perfect episode "The Storm." -Tim Surette  

Ghoul

Patient horror fans will be happy they stuck with all three episodes of this short miniseries from India, which slow burns its way to a flood of adrenaline in its third and final episode, an episode that works both as white-knuckle horror and a takedown of the Indian government. Set in a dystopian near-future when terrorism is rampant and the government takes no precautions to squash dissent, it follows a young female soldier brought to a black site to interrogate a terrorist leader. Of course, he isn't who he seems, and as things get more intense, people start dying in gruesome ways. If you dig Ghoul, you can also check out the four-episode Indian horror Betaal, also on Netflix. -Tim Surette