There were nearly 500 new U.S. produced scripted shows that premiered in 2025, reported by The Wrap with around 10% considered horror or supernatural thriller. That leaves a lot of options to consider when it comes to finding the right show to binge this Halloween season.
Whether you’re looking for something scary, supernatural, comedic, or a series-based-on-a-classic-horror-film, here are 7 horror shows to watch for Halloween that also might inspire you to write one of your own.
1. Widow’s Bay
Widow’s Bay was the breakout hit of the summer. It blended supernatural horror with comedy, which made it appeal to a lot of viewers. The series follows the mayor of Widow’s Bay, Tom (Matthew Rhys), who is struggling to make his New England island a tourist destination. Unfortunately, the island is cursed and everyone who inhabits Widow’s Bay knows it.
What makes it work is that it’s grounded in reality and the characters are believable and intriguing to follow. The series also knows how to hit both the horror and comedy at the right times without sacrificing either one.
“It was important to make clear that the scary will be scary and the funny will be funny. We never want the scary to feel silly. We want real tension, because I never wanted this to feel like a spoof, to feel campy,” creator and showrunner, Katie Dippold, said in a Hollywood Reporter interview.
2. American Horror Story
Since it debuted in 2011, American Horror Story (AHS) has reinvented itself across 13 seasons as a horror anthology. Its stories have revolved around haunted houses, witches, asylums, hotels, killer clowns, and more. By exploring different horror subgenres, AHS can completely subvert the expectations of the audience while creating new characters every season. After 15+ years, viewers don’t know what they’re getting in a season; they just know it’s going to be unique, frightening, and entertaining.
American Horror Story 13 is a perfect October watch, especially for fans of the series. It brings back several characters from previous seasons and takes place in a New York residential building where a hospice caretaker who survived a plane crash starts experiencing some weird and terrifying occurrences.
AHS shows how to successfully create a franchise that changes every season, yet has a recognizable identity.
3. Something Very Bad is Going to Happen
Rachel (Camila Morrone) and Nicky (Adam DiMarco) are heading to a remote compound where they plan to wed in front of Nicky’s family. This doesn’t quite go according to plan for the couple. With a title like Something Very Bad is Going to Happen, you know that you’re not clicking on a rom-com, but instead a horror/drama mini-series.
As Rachel meets the family and learns about the town where the wedding takes place, she feels an unsettling sense of dread where strange coincidences suddenly don’t seem random at all, but rather destiny. It leads to Rachel believing she’s cursed and thinks a series of events must come together to break it, maybe.
Taking a familiar event like a wedding and turning it into a nightmare scenario demonstrates how writers can put a horror element into everyday or familiar situations. There is also a ticking clock element to the story as the first scene of the series indicates the horror to come, then starts several days earlier.
Something Very Bad is Going to Happen is a bingeable Netflix series to watch this Halloween.
4. The Haunting of Hill House
Shirley Jackson’s novel has already had a few adaptations including the 1999 horror, The Haunting. The Netflix miniseries is a supernatural horror film told across multiple timelines revealing the haunting experiences of the characters when they lived in the house and what followed them after they left.
Horror is never just horror — it often looks into traumas or experiences of real life and weaves them into a terrifying narrative. Creator Mike Flanagan, who has another TV series on this list, uses traditional horror to showcase themes like grief, addiction, trauma, and family dysfunction. Flanagan shows how to combine scares with emotional depth so that the audience isn’t just invested in the horror, but also cares about the characters as well.
5. Interview with the Vampire
Anne Rice’s 1976 gothic horror novel, Interview with the Vampire, took a unique angle in telling a vampire story — a vampire wants to tell their story and decides to recount his life to a journalist. What unfolds is a complicated tale of horror, romance, violence and psychological drama.
The hit 1994 film starring Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Kirsten Dunst and Antonio Banderas was the first adaptation of the novel and was followed by the 2002 sequel Queen of the Damned. AMC’s Interview with the Vampire series expands the story, showing the complicated relationship between the two vampires, Lestat (Sam Reid) and Louis (Jacob Anderson), and even revisits Louis’s interview with the journalist as originally portrayed in the film.
6. Carrie
There have been several films made based on the Stephen King novel, Carrie, including the classic 1976 version. In October 2026, the TV series debuted on Amazon Prime from creator Mike Flanagan. The TV series maintains many of the recognizable aspects from the book and the original movie, such as Carrie’s telekinetic powers and the effects of bullying in high school, while expanding the stories and updating it for 2026.
The scares are more subtle in the series, as it all leads up to the events on prom night where Carrie turns her telekinetic powers into a horror show. Carrie takes a look at the nuances of bullying and what triggers someone to do. The show places the title character, someone who almost never stepped foot outside her house, right into the modern-day high school environment, scary for 1976 and unimaginable today.
Carrie, which has been around for 50 years, is a solid Halloween watch. Check out the movie, then watch the series to see how Flanagan used the original themes as a foundation for refreshing it.
7. Crystal Lake
Before Jason terrorized campers, there was his mom, Pamela Voorhees, who also terrorized campers. Since every villain needs an origin story, Crystal Lake is the story before the events that led to several camp counselor deaths. The series focuses on a grieving mother whose son, Jason, died at camp. The town moves on. She doesn’t.
Similar to a series like Bates Motel, which focuses on the origins of a notorious (fictional) killer, Crystal Lake goes into the backstory of what led to the events in Friday the 13th. With the ability to expand the story across 8 episodes as opposed to a 95-minute movie, the series shows how to turn a familiar horror concept into a deeper discussion of pain and what motivates someone to murder.
