4 Best Horror TV Shows of All Time, Ranked: ‘The Terror,’ ‘Marianne’ and More

Brianna ZiglerSun, March 29, 2026 at 1:05 PM UTC

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AMC/courtesy Everett Collection

This March, Netflix debuts an all-new horror show that we're super excited about.

Something Bad Is Going to Happen stars Camila Morrone and Adam DiMarco as an engaged couple who experience something strange in the week before their wedding.

Ahead of the premiere, Watch With Us wants to look back on some of the best horror shows of all time.

So, we have rounded up our four favorites and ranked them.

Our picks include the chilling French limited series Marianne and the first season of the supernatural historical drama The Terror.

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4. 'Ash vs. Evil Dead' (2015-2018)

Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell's Evil Dead franchise receives the television treatment with Ash vs. Evil Dead — a sublime mixture of horror and comedy that aired on STARZ for three seasons. The show follows the franchise's original hero Ash Williams (Campbell), now in his middle age but no less a juggernaut against the relentless malevolence of the Deadites. Though Ash has enjoyed a bachelor's life for the past 30 years, he always knew that the Deadites would someday come back for him. A careless incident ultimately summons the Evil Dead once more, and Ash teams up with his friends Pablo (Ray Santiago) and Kelly (Dana DeLorenzo) to face them.

Ash vs. Evil Dead certainly has some impressive Rotten Tomatoes scores, with a 98 percent critics' score for season 1, followed by two perfect scores for the second and final seasons. Indeed, the show is the ultimate blend of slapstick comedy, exhilarating action sequences, gross-out gore and a masterful command of tone. Ash vs. Evil Dead also further cements Hollywood's failure to make Bruce Campbell a movie star, as magnetic, handsome and full of charisma as he's ever been.

3. 'The Terror' (2018)

Based on Dan Simmons' 2007 novel of the same name, the first season of The Terror fictionalizes the real-life disappearance of the HMS Terror and HMS Erebus between 1845 and 1848, during their expedition to locate the Northwest Passage. Soon after the ships depart Beechy Island while heading towards King William Island and uncharted territory, both ships become frozen and trapped in the ice. While officers Francis Crozier (Jared Harris), James Fitzjames (Tobias Menzies) and Sir John Franklin (Ciarán Hinds) attempt to keep order, their men become restless with mutiny on the mind, plagued by a mysterious illness and hunted by an elusive beast that stalks the frozen landscape.

The Terror is an absolute tour de force of prestige period thriller, weaving riveting character drama, creeping atmosphere and genuinely scary moments into one of the best (and most underrated, honestly) horror shows of the past few years. While the second season (an anthology installment with no relation to Simmons' novel) was met with considerably less fanfare, season 1 of The Terror remains both superb historical fiction and on-the-edge-of-your-seat survival horror. It combines patient storytelling with psychological character study, resulting in a truly terrifying series.

2. 'Marianne' (2019)

Popular horror novelist Emma Larsimon (Victoire Du Bois) announces that she's sundowning her series of books surrounding a powerful witch named Marianne. After this, Emma receives a strange visit from a childhood friend (Aurore Boutin) who claims that her mother (Mireille Herbstmeyer) believes she is Marianne. Then, the friend turns up having hanged herself, leaving a warning regarding Emma's parents. Disturbed, Emma returns to her small hometown in the French countryside, where her nightmares of Marianne first developed, and where Emma left old wounds to remain unhealed.

In addition to following a riveting supernatural-mystery narrative, Marianne is one of the scariest and most atmospheric horror stories in recent memory across both the television and movie landscapes. While much of the sheer terror of the show comes from Herbstmeyer's nightmarish performance, the show is well-acted across the board, accompanied by rich character-writing, strong visual style, dense psychological horror and moments of shocking, visceral gore. Marianne has almost everything you could want from a great horror story, and it's made all the better for only having one season.

1. 'Channel Zero' (2016-2018)

Channel Zero is an anthology horror series in which each season is adapted from a popular creepypasta. The first season, subtitled Candle Cove, surrounds a children's program that seems linked to the mysterious, unsolved murders of five children from thirty years prior. Season 2, No-End House, centers on a group of friends who visit a haunted house art installation that doesn't want them to leave. Season 3, Butcher's Block, follows a troubled woman and her sister who move to a city haunted by enigmatic figures from its past. And in the final season, The Dream Door, a couple finds an old imaginary friend terrifyingly re-entering their lives.

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Channel Zero is arguably the best horror series of all time, a show that takes established short stories and crafts them into affecting, distinct and visually brilliant miniseries. While the show was sadly cancelled by SyFy at the end of its fourth season, four seasons is more than enough to experience the unique horror delights of each installment, helmed by different directors, different casts and different stylistic approaches. Channel Zero relies on a mastery of psychological and atmospheric horror, with textured scriptwriting, complex characters and an effective use of practical effects to make the horror feel even more grounded.

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”