The Spookiest New Shows to Watch This Halloween Season

Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photos: AMC+, Amazon Studios, Hulu, Everett Collection

Scrolling through 12 streaming platforms but still can’t find something to watch? You’re not alone. Our television columnist Michel Ghanem, a.k.a. @tvscholar, watches over 160 seasons of television each year, and he is here for you. Perhaps you’re in the mood for a hidden gem that’s sitting undiscovered on a streamer or a series with mysteries so tantalizing you can’t stop thinking about them long after the credits roll. It’s all about carving out time for the shows that are actually worth it — your appointment viewing. Fire up that group chat because we’ve got some unpacking to do.

Witches, sea hags, and telekinetic teens — we couldn’t settle for one spooky show this month, so we’ve selected four promising offerings. We’ve previously covered scare-inducing hits like Widow’s Bay and Alien: Earth, but this October there is an unusually large selection of spine-tingling shows — from more witchy horror on AMC+’s Yaga and foreboding mysteries with Hulu’s Phony. If sea monsters are more your thing, we have a recommendation for that too. Happy Halloween!

The Slavic folklore character of Baba Yaga has long been a fascination of popular culture, and she takes on many forms depending on who’s telling the story. She may be a witch living in a hut in the woods, sometimes she’s an old woman who eats children, or perhaps it’s more nuanced than those common tales. Yaga, created by Canadian playwright Kat Sandler and based on her 2019 play, is telling a new story of the ol’ witch. The first two episodes screened at the Toronto International Film Festival in September and will feel initially familiar to fans of True Detective — before things start getting supernatural.

In the small coastal town of Whittock we follow Carson (Clark Backo), a local police detective who reluctantly partners up with Rapp (Noah Reid), a private investigator who’s been hired by the wealthy parents of Henry (Hudson Williams), a missing college student. They venture around town interviewing folks and figure out something is definitely amiss with Henry’s osteology professor Katherine (Carrie-Anne Moss), who studies bones and has a reputation for perhaps boning her students.

We don’t quite yet know the role of Baba Yaga in the show, but brace yourselves for huge twists ahead in the eight-episode season. The spooky vibes and mysterious witchy phenomena make it a satisfying Halloween watch. And yes, there’s the Williams of it all. This is another Crave production, the streamer that brought you Heated Rivalry, and it’s a little horny too. Williams pulls double duty as Henry’s roommate Logan, and there’s a long scene in which all he wears is overalls. So make of that what you will!

Phony is having some awkward timing with the recent release of the horror movie Other Mommy — but trust me when I say this story is much, much better. Sonny (Sam Nivola) is a jolly high-schooler with a tender relationship with his mother, Ellen (Connie Britton), who raised him as a single parent and also happens to be the principal at his high school. A sudden car crash sends Sonny into a weeklong coma, only to wake up and find his mother by his hospital bedside. But she looks … different? Through the four of eight episodes provided to critics, I couldn’t quite put my finger on what Britton and the Phony team did to make her face look so subtly different: a makeup trick, face tape, an intentional change in facial expressions? Some combination of all of the above? Unfortunately, no one else in Sonny’s life sees the difference, and he ends up resorting to seeking out a private investigator to help him get to the bottom of it. Phony is classified as a comedy but the mystery here is pretty spooky, especially as the show keeps dangling short snippets of a dead body at the end of each episode.

I have a bunch of theories for Phony and I can tell it’s the kind of show that will send Reddit into a frenzy. Midway through the season, it still holds its cards very close to the chest — my money is on either a twin sister or Invasion of the Body Snatchers–style aliens. The show zips by in half-hour episodes and has a certain quirky charm to it; creator Nick Paley co-wrote Marcel the Shell With Shoes On and edited episodes of Broad City, which gives you a pretty good idea of the tone here. There’s a certain clumsy teen realism to Phony that even feels reminiscent of Sterling Point. Long live mumblecore!

We all know this one. And while there have been many adaptations of Stephen King’s famous Carrie novel, this is the first television adaptation of the story. The episodic format lets a lot breathe, here: Summer H. Howell plays the titular telekinetic character and you can see her bright-eyed optimism fade as the formerly homeschooled teen gets increasingly bullied by her peers. The drama really kicks off when Carrie — who was not taught about the menstrual cycle growing up — freaks out at the sight of her first period after gym class. In both Brian De Palma’s 1976 film and in this adaptation, the group of teens pelt tampons at poor Carrie who’s been pushed into a shower stall while they all chant “plug it up” (somean). The difference here is really what sets the modern adaptation apart — everyone pulls their phones out to film her. Ringleader Chris Hargensen (Alison Thornton) ends up posting the clip on “Carrie Red,” an Instagram account she creates to make fun of Carrie, other students, and faculty. She basically becomes the Gossip Girl of the school, a clever modernization of an old bullying story.

A lot more is expanded on, too: Margaret White (Samantha Sloyan) is much more fleshed out, becoming very involved in the Carrie Red of it all, and launching her own influencer account to meet the bullies where they are. There have been some fan complaints about the season’s ending, which opens up the show to branch off to something completely different from the original — and there is speculation that Mike Flanagan might be interested in connecting his Carrie to The Dark Tower, another King series, since the show features other individuals with superhuman abilities. Flanagan did mention he has a three-season plan in mind going forward, and it’s been renewed for a second, so we’ll have to wait and see. As a Flanaganhead who has loved everything he’s made from Ouija: Origin of Evil (a genuinely terrifying and underrated film) to The Haunting of Hill House (should have won Emmys), I will be tuning in.

Remember the sea hag from Widow’s Bay? She’s back! Well, sort of. The hag does make an appearance in Below, a seaside supernatural series created by Jesse McKeown, but Below has got a lot more going on: a Kraken haunting the Newfoundland coastline, the townspeople going mad from drinking contaminated ice, and Josh Hartnett in cozy cable-knit sweaters (this last bit is very important, at least to me). Hartnett plays Calvin Penney, a single father of three kids and fisherman in the remote town of Snook’s Arm, Newfoundland. The small community is facing resettlement (which did actually happen to the real-life Snook’s Arm, population: ten) and all of Calvin’s kids are in town to visit. Meanwhile, marine biologist Fonda Howander (Mackenzie Davis) is picking up on some unusual activity in the sea.

Below is a quick binge as a six-episode limited series and the frights are just as entertaining as the very thick accents. The special effects aren’t amazing and it’s not as polished or comedic as Widow’s Bay, so comparing them feels unreasonable, but I still had fun watching Hartnett and Davis save this little town from a sea monster. It also pales in comparison to something like Davis’s last television project, Station Eleven, which ranked at 93 on the New YorkTimes’ list of best shows of the 21st century (and actually is a bit spooky too now that I think of it). Luckily, anything ocean horror is an easy grab — the real deep-sea creatures in Planet Earth are enough to give me nightmares.

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The Spookiest New Shows to Watch This Halloween Season