7 Best Horror Shows Released Since 2020

Image via Apple TV Published Oct 22, 2026, 2:09 PM EDT Sign in to your Collider account Horror television has become much more patient over the last few years. The best shows are no longer in a hurry to reveal the monster or deliver a scare every few minutes. They give viewers time to settle into a world that already feels slightly wrong before the horror fully takes over. That intentionality in storytelling has made television an especially exciting place for horror, because fear can build across entire episodes instead of disappearing after one big reveal. The genre has especially taken off since 2020, with streaming giving showrunners room to experiment with storytelling and horror that overlaps with other genres. These shows on this list prove just how much fun horror television has become when creators are given the freedom to go all out with it. 7 'From' (2022–Present) Image via MGM+ From has a premise that immediately makes the audience look for a way out. The story begins when a family takes a wrong turn during a road trip and somehow ends up in a small American town they just can't leave. Every road eventually loops back to the same place, no matter which direction they drive. That setup is disturbing enough, but once night falls, human-looking creatures emerge from the surrounding forest and calmly try to convince people to let them in. The town's sheriff, Boyd Stevens (Harold Perrineau), has spent years keeping the survivors alive with a set of mysterious talismans that prevent these creatures from entering protected buildings. As bizarre as all of this is, it's horrific how life continues in this town in spite of all the horror. The residents have created routines because they have no other choice. Everyone gets indoors before dark, windows are covered or nailed shut, and newcomers quickly learn that letting one of the smiling creatures inside can get everyone killed. Some people live together in Colony House, while others try to maintain something closer to normal family life in the town below. This sense of routine in the face of something so weird makes the horror hit harder whenever the community's rules stop feeling reliable. Not to mention the larger mystery surrounding the forest and all the secrets longtime resident Victor (Scott McCord) knows but can't seem to share. From unfolds with a constant uncertainty that makes it impossible to quit. There is always another clue suggesting that the town can be understood, followed by a discovery that makes it feel even more impossible. 6 'Midnight Mass' (2021) Image via Netflix Midnight Mass is Mike Flanagan at his absolute best, since the show brings together grief, faith, and supernatural horror into one deeply unsettling story. The series is set on the isolated and slowly dying fishing community of Crockett Island. As more and more families move away, the remaining residents cling to the church at the center of town. The narrative picks up when Riley Flynn (Zach Gilford) returns home carrying enormous guilt after serving time in prison. His arrival coincides with that of a charismatic young priest named Father Paul (Hamish Linklater), who arrives to temporarily replace the island's elderly monsignor. Soon after, seemingly impossible things begin happening. People recover from illnesses, old injuries disappear, and church attendance suddenly starts growing again. Naturally, most of the islanders believe Father Paul is the one responsible for these miracles, and their faith in him grows stronger with every unexplained recovery. That is where Midnight Mass becomes especially unsettling as the line between religious devotion and blind obedience starts to disappear. Flanagan takes his sweet time building up to the final reveal, but that is because he wants the people on Crockett Island to feel real before delivering a blow that stays with the audience long after the final episode. 5 'All of Us Are Dead' (2022–Present) Image via Netflix All of Us Are Dead deserves way more recognition than it gets for how brilliant its horror is. The Korean series follows students at Hyosan High after a science experiment goes horribly wrong, and a virus begins spreading through the school. Within hours, classrooms are overrun, and a group of students, including On-jo (Park Ji-hu), Cheong-san (Yoon Chan-young), Su-hyeok (Lomon), and Nam-ra (Cho Yi-hyun), are left trying to survive without any real help from the adults outside. Simply put, the show turns an ordinary school day into a nightmare almost instantly. Now, surviving the zombies is only half the problem, because the characters are also teenagers with complicated feelings, crushes, and rivalries, all of which follow them into survival mode. That teenage drama matters because every survival decision is also tangled up in who trusts whom, who is secretly in love with whom, and which grudges refuse to disappear even in a situation like this. The emotional turmoil of it all is never a distraction from the horror, but what makes it hit harder. The show also keeps finding new ways to use the school itself by turning classrooms, stairwells, the cafeteria, and even the rooftop into completely different kinds of traps. Every escape feels temporary, and every loss changes the group’s dynamics. The series understands that a zombie story becomes much more painful when the people being chased are still young enough to believe they should have had their whole lives ahead of them, and that elevates it from any other zombie drama out there. 4 'The Last of Us' (2023–Present) The Last of Us adapts Naughty Dog's iconic video game for TV, which means it already had a high bar to meet, given that the source material is considered one of the greatest stories ever told. The HBO adaptation does absolute justice to it, though, because it doesn't just recreate the game and call it a day. The series is set twenty years after a fungal outbreak destroys modern civilization and begins with hardened smuggler Joel Miller (Pedro Pascal) being tasked with transporting fourteen-year-old Ellie (Bella Ramsey) across the United States. Ellie is immune to the infection, which makes her potentially crucial to finding a cure, but getting her to the people who can study that immunity means crossing a country filled with infected creatures, violent survivors, and communities that have created their own brutal rules in this mad world. What starts as a mildly inconvenient job for Joe gradually takes a turn as Ellie slowly gets past the defenses he has built since losing his daughter, while Joel becomes the closest thing she has to family. That relationship is what gives the horror real weight, because it becomes the center of everything. The Last of Us is so much more than a standard post-apocalyptic series because it doesn't sacrifice its plot for pure spectacle. Collider Exclusive · Horror Survival Quiz Which Horror Villain Do You Have the Best Chance of Surviving? Jason Voorhees · Michael Myers · Freddy Krueger · Pennywise · Chucky Five killers. Five completely different ways to die — if you're not smart enough, fast enough, or self-aware enough to avoid it. Only one of them is the villain your particular set of instincts gives you a fighting chance against. Eight questions will figure out which one. 🏕️Jason 🔪Michael 💤Freddy 🎈Pennywise 🪆Chucky TEST YOUR SURVIVAL → 01 Something feels wrong. You can't explain it — you just know. What do you do? First instincts are the difference between the survivor and the first act casualty. ALeave immediately. I don't need to understand a threat to respect it. BStay quiet and observe. If I can see it, I can understand it. If I can understand it, I can avoid it. CStay awake. Whatever this is, I am not going to sleep until I feel safe again. DConfront it directly. Fear grows in the dark — I'd rather know what I'm dealing with. ECheck everything, trust nothing. The threat might be closer than I think — and smaller. NEXT QUESTION → 02 Where are you most likely to find yourself when things go wrong? Setting is everything in horror. Where you are determines which rules apply. ASomewhere remote — a cabin, a campsite, off the grid and away from people. BA quiet suburban neighbourhood where nothing ever happens. Except tonight. CIn my own head — the most dangerous place of all, depending on what's already in there. DWherever children are — because something about this place attracts the worst things. ESomewhere ordinary — a house, a toy store, a place where the last thing you'd expect is a threat. NEXT QUESTION → 03 What is your most reliable survival asset? Every survivor has a quality the villain didn't account for. What's yours? APhysical fitness — I can run, I can swim, I can outlast something that relies on brute persistence. BSpatial awareness — I always know the exits, the hiding spots, the fastest route out. CPsychological resilience — I've faced my worst fears before. They don't have the same power over me. DEmotional steadiness — I don't panic. Panic is what gets you caught. EScepticism — I don't underestimate threats because of how they look. Size is irrelevant. NEXT QUESTION → 04 What kind of fear is hardest for you to fight through? Knowing your weakness is the first step to not dying because of it. AThe unstoppable — something that will not stop, cannot be reasoned with, and is always getting closer. BThe invisible — a threat I can feel but can't locate, watching from somewhere I can't see. CThe psychological — something that uses my own mind and memories against me. DThe unknowable — something ancient, shapeless, that feeds on the fear itself. EThe mundane — a threat so ordinary-looking that no one will believe me until it's too late. NEXT QUESTION → 05 You're with a group when things start going wrong. What's your role? Horror movies are brutally clear about who survives group situations and who doesn't. AThe one who says "we need to leave" first — and means it, even when no one listens. BThe one who stays quiet, watches the others, and figures out the pattern before anyone else does. CThe one who holds the group together when panic sets in — because someone has to. DThe one who asks the questions nobody wants to ask — because ignoring them gets people killed. EThe one who takes the threat seriously when everyone else is laughing it off. NEXT QUESTION → 06 What's the horror movie mistake you're most likely to make? Honest self-assessment is a survival skill. Denial is not. AGoing back for someone — I know I shouldn't, but I can't leave them behind. BAssuming I'm safe once I've found a hiding spot. That's when it finds me. CFalling asleep when I absolutely cannot afford to. Exhaustion is its own enemy. DLetting my curiosity override my instincts — I always need to understand what I'm dealing with. EDismissing the threat because of how it looks. That's exactly what it wants. NEXT QUESTION → 07 What's your best weapon against something that can't be stopped by conventional means? Every horror villain has a weakness. The survivors are always the ones who find it. AThe environment itself — I use the terrain, the water, the geography against it. BPatience — I wait, I watch, and I strike at the one moment it doesn't expect. CLucidity — if I can stay in control of my own mind, it loses its primary weapon. DCourage — facing it directly, refusing to run, taking away the fear it feeds on. EImprovisation — I use whatever's at hand, however unconventional. Creativity over brute force. NEXT QUESTION → 08 It's the final scene. You're the last one standing. How did you make it? The final survivor always has a reason. What's yours? AI kept moving. I never stopped, never hid for too long, never let it corner me. BI figured out the pattern before anyone else did — and I used it against the thing following it. CI stayed awake, stayed lucid, and refused to give it the one thing it needed most. DI stopped being afraid of it. And the moment I did, everything changed. EI took it seriously from the start — and I never once made the mistake of underestimating it. REVEAL MY VILLAIN → Your Survival Odds Have Been Calculated Your Best Chance Is Against…Your instincts, your strengths, and your particular way of thinking under pressure point to one villain you actually have a fighting chance against. Everyone else — good luck. Jason VoorheesJason is relentless, but he is also predictable — and that is the gap you would exploit. He moves in straight lines toward his target. He doesn't strategise, doesn't adapt, doesn't outsmart. He simply pursues. Your ability to keep moving, use the environment, and resist the panic that freezes most victims gives you a genuine edge. The Crystal Lake survivors were always the ones who stopped running in circles and started thinking about terrain, water, and distance. You think like that. Which means Jason, for all his indestructibility, would face someone who simply refused to be where he expected. Michael MyersMichael watches before he moves. He is patient, methodical, and almost impossible to detect — until it's too late for anyone who isn't paying close enough attention. But you are paying attention. You notice the shape in the window, the car parked slightly wrong, the silence where there should be sound. Michael's power lies in the invisibility of ordinary suburbia — the fact that nothing ever looks wrong until it already is. Your spatial awareness and instinct to map every room, every exit, and every shadow before you need them is precisely the quality Laurie Strode had. You are not a victim waiting to happen. You are someone who already suspects something is wrong — and acts on it. Freddy KruegerFreddy wins by getting inside your head — using your own fears, your own memories, your own subconscious as weapons against you. That strategy requires a target who can be destabilised. You are harder to destabilise than most. You've faced uncomfortable truths about yourself and you haven't looked away. The survivors on Elm Street were always the ones who understood what was happening and chose to face it rather than flee from it. Freddy's greatest weakness is that his power evaporates in the presence of someone who refuses to give him the fear he feeds on. Your psychological resilience — the ability to stay grounded when reality itself becomes unreliable — is exactly the quality that keeps you alive here. PennywisePennywise is ancient, shapeshifting, and feeds on terror — but it has one critical vulnerability: it cannot function against someone who genuinely stops being afraid of it. The Losers Club didn't survive because they were braver than everyone else. They survived because they faced their fears together, and faced them honestly. You ask the questions others avoid. You look directly at what frightens you rather than turning away. That directness — the refusal to let fear fester in the dark — is Pennywise's worst nightmare. It chose the wrong target when it chose you. You are exactly the kind of person whose fear tastes like nothing at all. ChuckyChucky's greatest advantage is that nobody takes him seriously until it's already too late. He exploits the gap between how something looks and what it actually is. You don't have that gap. You take threats seriously regardless of how they present — and you never make the mistake of underestimating something because of its size or appearance. Chucky relies on surprise, on the delay between recognition and response. You close that delay faster than almost anyone. Your instinct to treat every unfamiliar thing with appropriate scepticism — rather than dismissing it because it seems absurd — is the exact quality that keeps you breathing. Against Chucky, not laughing is already winning. You are very good at not laughing. ↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ 3 'The Fall of the House of Usher' (2023) Image via Netflix The Fall of the House of Usher is another Flanagan masterpiece on the list. The series follows pharmaceutical billionaire Roderick Usher (Bruce Greenwood) and his sister Madeline (Mary McDonnell), who have built the powerful Fortunato empire. Now, things take a dark turn when Roderick's children begin dying one after another in increasingly bizarre and gruesome ways. As the body count rises, Roderick recounts the story of his family to prosecutor C. Auguste Dupin (Carl Lumbly), which reveals how the Ushers got their wealth and why someone named Verna (Carla Gugino) seems to be at the center of every tragedy that befalls the family. What's fascinating is how the show pulls characters, imagery, and storylines from several Edgar Allan Poe works into one modern family saga, with each Usher sibling's fate echoing a different Poe story. That structure gives the show a nasty sense of inevitability because viewers know each Usher child is heading toward disaster, even if they have no idea what form it will take. What makes the series especially fun is that the horror is tied directly to who these people are. The deaths are elaborate, but they never feel random. Instead, they reflect what each sibling values most, and how it ultimately becomes the very thing that destroys them. The Fall of the House of Usher is chilling, but never without reason, and that is the mark of a great horror story. 2 'Widow's Bay' (2026–Present) Image via Apple TV Widow's Bay only gets funnier with each episode, but that happens without sacrificing the horror. The story follows Mayor Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys), who is determined to turn his struggling New England island into a fashionable tourist destination, despite the locals constantly warning him that the place is cursed. Tom dismisses their stories as superstition, especially when he finally convinces a major travel writer to come see the island. Unfortunately, that is also when a mysterious fog rolls in and the ridiculous old legends start looking a lot more credible. The contradiction between Tom's desperation and the increasingly undeniable horror around him becomes the show's best running joke. Widow's Bay never stops being entertaining because each episode can introduce a new piece of folklore or horror trope without losing the larger story of Tom trying to save a place that may just want outsiders gone. The humor never makes the danger feel harmless, either, which is exactly why the show's strange mix works so well. 1 'The Outsider' (2020) Image via HBO The Outsider opens with an impossible murder case, and keeps building on it. The story begins when Detective Ralph Anderson (Ben Mendelsohn) arrests local teacher Terry Maitland (Jason Bateman) after witnesses, fingerprints, and DNA appear to place him at the murder of a young boy. The evidence seems overwhelming, except Terry also has an equally convincing alibi proving he was in another city at the exact same time. Ralph is suddenly left with two versions of the truth that cannot possibly coexist, and the harder he tries to explain it, the more complicated the situation becomes. Eventually, private investigator Holly Gibney (Cynthia Erivo) is brought in because solving it requires considering an explanation Ralph does not want to believe. The Outsider slowly shifts from crime drama to supernatural horror, but it still takes the audience by surprise. The show's opening episodes make it feel like a typical crime procedural before Ralph is forced to consider that the killer may not be entirely human. However, the show doesn't say it outright and lets the audience piece the puzzle together through Holly's discovery of nearly identical cases in other cities. That uncertainty defines The Outsider, because even once the supernatural explanation becomes harder to deny, the characters are still trying to understand what exactly they are dealing with. The Outsider Release Date 2020 - 2020-00-00 Main Genre Crime Seasons 1 Creator(s) Richard Price