TV's horror renaissance
It's officially horror season. But we didn't always have this many options.
Horror on television has historically faced an uphill battle. Between broadcast standards, getting shut-out from major awards, episodes being censored due to violence or gore…it took until 2018’s The Haunting of Hill House for me to pause and think about how far the genre has evolved compared to film horror, and what even defines horror on television—despite phenomenal seasons of television like Hill House still getting shut-out from award consideration.
In film, horror classics seem to remain classics. Psycho will always be Psycho. Dark Shadows, a 1960s gothic soap opera with werewolves and witches I only found out about by reading a chapter from Lorna Jewett and Stacey Abbott’s 2013 academic book, TV Horror, is probably mostly unwatchable and forgotten from the public imagination.
At least, the breadcrumbs of horror on television are easy to follow, from unsettling episodes of The Twilight Zone (1959 version, of course) to episodes of Star Trek, which had to rely more on atmospheric dread than gore to get episodes to the air.
Innovation in horror television, similarly to the deepening of the medium in other ways, has run parallel to its technological evolution. The VCR and DVD arrived and so did The X-Files, Twin Peaks, and Buffy The Vampire Slayer. These shows began to explore a serial narrative; no longer did television have to reset itself back to the status quo every episode. True fans could buy the tapes or record it themselves at home, catching pieces of the narrative thread that ran through the seasons. The more control was/is offered to audiences, the more networks can afford to develop within the horror niche—DVD sales were extremely profitable until recently.
That said, experimentation was not in horror television’s favour. Twin Peaks’ audience dropped off as soon as its central murder was solved, leading to a quick cancellation. It never won an Emmy, despite being a cult favourite. The X-Files and Buffy were still largely monster-of-the-week series, finding aesthetic safety within that rhythm—straying from that structure was a risk to viewership and reputation.
A major aesthetic shift came along with premium cable. HBO’s iconic vampire series True Blood (I hear a reboot is in the works?), the more surreal art house series Carnivàle, and even Dexter started exploring horror in a more direct way.
There is no doubt the proliferation and success of horror on television in the last two decades is indebted to a select few shows that exploded onto the mainstream, though. It’s hard to believe that The Walking Dead, which is wrapping up in the coming months on its eleventh season, once broke the record for the most-watched episode on cable ever in the United States in 2014 with the fifth season’s premiere. Today, Stranger Things continues to bust similar records, and true crime shows cooked in a base of horror like Dahmer arrive to Netflix with a tantalizing splash. TV’s horror golden age is here, all around us.
Television horror, as opposed to film, has the gift of time, building out a character’s psychology and finding ways for horror to crawl under your skin in ways sometimes a film can’t.
Numerous dramas outside of the horror cannon still end up borrowing horror tropes and plot devices as they delve into the psychology of a character. The Affair’s third season comes to mind, when Noah (Dominic West) was at the height of his PTSD after his release from prison, thinking his prison guard (Brendan Fraser) was stalking him. His story took on a dark, paranoid tone reminiscent of a psychological thriller. Lost is another solid example of a grounded human drama that utilized horror tropes throughout its run—to great effect, too. You can probably think of dozens of other examples.
That said, in working toward an embodied-led definition of horror on television, I return to critic and philosopher Julia Kristeva’s seminal concept of abjection. That feeling of pure disgust, when horror leaves you with a body/mind disconnection or out-of-body experience, like watching a zombie tear through a favourite character’s abdomen in the early days of The Walking Dead before I got as desensitized as I am now to that imagery. Or throughout the final two episodes of Sharp Objects, when you piece together what has really been going on and how deep this Southern gothic intergenerational trauma runs, and your stomach turns.
“The abject has only quality of the object, that of being opposed to I.”
“A massive and sudden emergence of uncanniness, which, familiar as it might have been in an opaque and forgotten life, now harries me as radically separate, loathsome. Not me. Not that.” (page 1-2, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection)
I’m grateful for a television landscape where there is a horror show for every flavour. There are three vampire series premiering this fall: Vampire Academy (to mixed reviews on Peacock), Interview with the Vampire (to critical acclaim for AMC), and Let the Right One In (described as dull by a critic, to air on Showtime). There is, of course, our yearly Mike Flanagan horror television series on the docket for October, The Midnight Club, although I have yet to feel his shows have surpassed the awe-inspiring experience of watching The Haunting of Hill House.
There are other shows on the periphery:
Apple TV’s Servant (2019–), one of my personal favourites.
From (2022–), a series on my to-watch list with tangible Lost vibes.
Netflix’s excellent and underrated French horror series Marianne from 2019.
The Baby, a miniseries on HBO about a haunted supernatural baby, brilliantly satirizing elements of parenting through the lens of horror (I also interviewed the show’s lead, Michelle de Swarte).
Fear the Walking Dead, the highly entertaining spin-off boasting a cast of phenomenal actors like Kim Dickens, Colman Domingo, Lennie James and Jenna Elfman and constantly finding ways to reinvent itself.
Shining Vale, which I didn’t love but is a fascinating showcase for Courtney Cox and a haunted house.
Evil, the phenemonal Paramount+ semi-procedural about investigating demonic activity.
Chucky, Syfy’s television continuation/reboot of the iconic film, if you’re into possessed dolls.
Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities, a promising new horror anthology series being released the days preceding this month’s Halloween on Netflix.
Attack on Titan, a horror anime series about flesh-eating giants.
The Midwich Cuckoos, a British scifi horror series starring Keeley Hawes.
American Horror Story returns for its eleventh season, this time about New York City (?). Bring on the Ryan Murphy camp.
I’ve been meaning to watch All of Us Are Dead (Netflix), a Korean zombie coming-of-age series.
The new Pretty Little Liars reboot on HBO Max is a more straight-forward slasher than the original series
Apple TV’s Invasion, a reasonably tense alien invasion slow-burn.
Invasion, season 1 Hannibal, for the flesh-eating variety. Or Yellowjackets, for some more of that.
Sharp Objects, for a taste of psychological horror in the Southern gothic that you won’t forget any time soon.
And finally, for more horror, Rolling Stone has a very solid best horror TV shows of all time list. Don’t let the bed bugs bite.
I feel like the first horror show I ever watched was Harper’s Island. Anyone remember that show? It definitely had an impact on me in part because I watched it when I was probably 14 and also because it’s supposed to take place near where I’m from. Can’t really remember if it’s actually any good though.