The Best Horror TV Shows To Watch On Hulu
Time for "Huluween."
“Huluween” may be over but, with all the great horror TV shows on Hulu, it is still one of the best streaming services to subscribe to for a good scare no matter what time of year. If you have already seen all the best horror movies on Hulu but still crave some more lasting chills and thrills, take a look at these freaky series available with a Hulu subscription, which even includes a few new horror TV shows.
The House (2017)
Starring: Various
What it’s about: A house constructed from the wood of a mysterious tree serves as the setting for a series of creepy and strange tales.
Why it is one of the best horror TV shows on Hulu: Get a quick scare from the short stories presented in The House – a Hulu-exclusive collection of short films connected by the eerie eponymous establishment.
The Fades (2011)
Starring: Iain De Caestecker, Daniel Kaluuya
What it’s about: A young man becomes the only hope for humanity when he sees visions of the end of the world and the evil spirits that will cause it.
Why it is one of the best horror TV shows on Hulu: One of Daniel Kaluuya’s best performances before Get Out can be seen on The Fades – creator Jack Thorne’s creepy, acclaimed U.K. miniseries.
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Parasyte: The Maxim (2014)
Starring: Nobunaga Shimazaki, Aya Hirano
What it’s about: A teenager learns how to coexist with a parasitic alien that has infected his hand.
Why it is one of the best horror TV shows on Hulu: One of the most beloved adaptations of Hitoshi Iwaaki’s popular manga is Parasyte: The Maxim – a supremely bizarre Japanese anime series that is not afraid to get a little wacky, too.
The Exorcist (2016-2018)
Starring: Alfonso Herrera, Ben Daniels, Geena Davis
What it’s about: Two priests investigate disturbing matters regarding ordinary people acting out of character.
Why it is one of the best horror TV shows on Hulu: Inspired by one of the best horror movies of all time, creator Jeremy Slater’s The Exorcist is a surprisingly strong series about demonic possession that lasted two seasons on Fox.
Goosebumps (2023-Present)
Starring: Justin Long, David Schwimmer
What it’s about: A group of high school students must overcome their differences in order to stop an evil force they accidentally unleashed in their town.
Why it is one of the best horror TV shows on Hulu: Hulu and Disney+’s Goosebumps – which has a Season 2 in the works – ditches the anthology route and raises the stakes a bit higher than the target demographic for R.L. Stine’s original book series might be used to.
Reginald The Vampire (2022-2024)
Starring: Jacob Batalon, Mandela Van Peebles
What it’s about: An underachieving young man gains a new lease on life when he is turned into a creature of the night.
Why it is one of the best horror TV shows on Hulu: From developer Harley Peyton, Reginald the Vampire is an endearingly funny take on vampire lore based on a series of books by Johnny B. Truant.
Helstrom (2020)
Starring: Tom Austen, Sydney Lemmon, Elizabeth Marvel
What it’s about: The son and daughter of a powerful, notorious murderer use their unique skills to search for and destroy dark forces.
Why it is one of the best horror TV shows on Hulu: Paul Zbyszewski takes inspiration from the Marvel Comics characters Hellstorm and Satana to create Helstrom – a gritty supernatural drama that lasted one season on Hulu.
The UnXplained (2019-Present)
Starring: William Shatner
What it’s about: UFOs, ghost sightings, curses, and other bizarre topics are explored in this docuseries.
Why it is one of the best horror TV shows on Hulu: The History Channel’s The UnXplained is an entertaining exploration of various bizarre and unsettling phenomena that experts still struggle to understand to this day.
SurrealEstate (2021-Present)
Starring: Tim Rozon, Sarah Levy
What it’s about: A team of real estate agents takes on the specialized task of removing evil presences from their clients’ homes in order to make them more fitting for a good sale.
Why it is one of the best horror TV shows on Hulu: The clever idea of realtors who double as paranormal investigators is explored in SurrealEstate.
American Horror Stories (2021-Present)
Starring: Various
What it’s about: A family experiencing a unique disconnect when moving into a house with a deadly history, a drive-in facing a disaster when screening an infamous horror movie, and a job interview for a doll manufacturer having an unexpected turnout are just some of the twisted tales explored in this series.
Why it is one of the best horror TV shows on Hulu: Fans of American Horror Story that prefer their anthologies to take things one story per episode will find exactly what they are looking for in the Hulu exclusive spin-off, American Horror Stories.
Teen Wolf (2011-2017)
Starring: Tyler Posey, Dylan O’Brien
What it’s about: An average teenager becomes swept up in the world of the supernatural after a fateful bite turns him into a half-man, half-animal hybrid.
Why it is one of the best horror TV shows on Hulu: Developer Jeff Davis’ much darker reinterpretation of one of the best Michael J. Fox movies, Teen Wolf, would become one of the most acclaimed and most popular MTV original series in recent memory and later inspired a feature-length continuation exclusive to Paramount+.
Scream Queens (2015-2016)
Starring: Emma Roberts, Keke Palmer, Abigail Breslin, Billie Lourd
What it’s about: The members of an already dysfunctional college sorority really begin to turn on each other when they are stalked by a masked killer and, later, fall prey to another elusive murderer after they are hired on to the staff of their dean’s new hospital.
Why it is one of the best horror TV shows on Hulu: American Horror Story co-creators Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk tried their hand at a more humorous and location-based attempt at the anthology horror TV show structure with Scream Queens – a title they earned by casting the most famous of the horror movie Scream Queens, Jamie Lee Curtis.
Wayward Pines (2015-2016)
Starring: Matt Dillon, Carla Gugino
What it’s about: The search for a pair of missing federal agents leads a Secret Service agent toward a strange small town that soon proves to be harder to leave than one would assume.
Why it is one of the best horror TV shows on Hulu: From producer M. Night Shyamalan, developer Chad Hodge’s series adaptation of Blake Crouch’s Wayward Pines book trilogy is an engrossingly suspenseful mindbender that fans of Twin Peaks might get a kick out of.
Monsterland (2020)
Starring: Various
What it’s about: A socially isolated teen having an unexpected and unwelcome encounter, a successful business executive at risk of losing everything for past mistakes, and a married couple struggling to overcome their own consuming grief are just three of these eight tales about redemption by uncomfortable and especially unexplainable means.
Why it is one of the best horror TV shows on Hulu: Largely inspired by the stories in Nathan Ballingrund’s book, North American Lake Monsters, the Hulu original anthology series, Monsterland – featuring No One Will Save You star Kaitlyn Dever – takes a cue from The Twilight Zone by exploring the darker sides of humanity through a grim and fantastic lens.
Castle Rock (2018-2019)
Starring: Andre Holland, Lizzy Caplan, Bill Skarsgård
What it’s about: A small town in Maine lives up to its grim reputation after a lawyer (played by Andre Holland) returns to defend a man (played by Bill Skarsgård) secretly held captive for decades, and later when a desperate single mother (played by Lizzy Caplan) makes an emergency stop that sets off a horrifying chain of events.
Why it is one of the best horror TV shows on Hulu: The titular community of Castle Rock refers to a fictional place that shows up in many stories by horror master Stephen King, whose most famous characters are either directly involved or cleverly referenced in each of the two multi-episodic arcs explored in this beautifully crafted, prematurely canceled seasonal anthology.
American Horror Story (2011-Present)
Starring: Various
What it’s about: Witness patients of a sadistic mental hospital fighting for their sanity (and lives), traveling roadshow performers struggling with their own “gifts” (among other things), teenage campers having the worst summer ever, and more stories that boggle the mind and challenge the senses in one of the most acclaimed horror anthology TV shows of all time.
Why it is one of the best horror TV shows on Hulu: Sarah Paulson, Evan Peters, and others make up the cast of recurring actors who play a variety of characters that span decades, and even planes of existence, in American Horror Story – Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk’s collection of exhilarating, psychosexual, multi-episodic thrillers which will keep you from looking at the genre the same way ever again.
The X-Files (1993-2018)
Starring: David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson
What it’s about: FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully often have differing opinions of the cases they are assigned, but what neither of them can deny is just how strange they tend to be.
Why it is one of the best horror TV shows on Hulu: From UFO conspiracies, cryptid sightings, urban legends, and other various encounters out of the ordinary, The X-Files – creator Chris Carter’s phenomenal marriage of crime procedurals with science fiction and fantasy – never fails to deliver some truly bizarre and harrowing sights that will haunt you long after you finish all 11 seasons.
Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1997-2003)
Starring: Sarah Michelle Gellar, Alyson Hannigan
What it’s about: A teenage girl striving for an average life instead must accept her destiny as a warrior against demons, bloodsuckers, and all forms of evil with help from her friends and the school librarian.
Why it is one of the best horror TV shows on Hulu: Unlike Mulder and Scully, the title character in Buffy the Vampire Slayer – a darker series update of the 1992 horror comedy movie – chases after the supernatural with a more direct and forceful approach that amounts to a stellar and plenty frightening display of monster-hunting fun over seven hit seasons.
The Strain (2014-2017)
Starring: Corey Stoll, David Bradley, Kevin Durand
What it’s about: A CDC researcher is in over his head with the discovery of a virus, originating from a commercial jet that mysteriously appeared in New York, that slowly begins to turn those infected into undead creatures of the night.
Why it is one of the best horror TV shows on Hulu: Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan’s series adaptation of their own trilogy of horror novels (the first of which is titled The Strain), takes a more complex and scientific approach to exploring vampire lore and the cataclysmic effect it would have on humanity.
The Purge (2018-2019)
Starring: Gabriel Chavarria, Derek Luke
What it’s about: A not-too-distant future in which all crime, including murder, is legal for one 12-hour period each year is seen through the eyes of several loosely connected Americans just trying to stay alive past sunrise.
Why it is one of the best horror TV shows on Hulu: The two-season run of this USA original offers an arguably more fascinating and poignant exploration of the sociopolitical message of the popular franchise of The Purge movies it is spun-off from by its brutal depiction of a society torn apart by its own people.
What We Do In The Shadows (2019-Present)
Starring: Kayvan Novak, Matt Berry, Natasha Demetriou, Harvey Guillén, Mark Proksch
What it’s about: A camera crew follows a group of seemingly easy-going vampires and their human familiar to examine what life is like for the undead in Staten Island.
Why it is one of the best horror TV shows on Hulu: This series expands on the concept of one of the best horror-comedy movies – Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement’s hilarious mockumentary, What We Do in the Shadows – by offering even more brilliant and insightful satire on the mythology pioneered by Bram Stoker.
Bite Size Halloween (2020-2022)
Starring: Various
What it’s about: Get a quick scare with these shorts about a lonely teenage girl discovering she is not so alone at an empty basketball court, a desperate man searching for purpose through a DNA research company, a cruel prankster receiving his ultimate comeuppance, and many more.
Why it is one of the best horror TV shows on Hulu: As the title suggests, Bite Size Halloween is a collection of films exclusive to Hulu that last mere minutes, but offer enough screams, and even laughs, to last you long after that.
What do you think? Is Hulu your new go-to hub for a blood-curdling binge, or will it take a lot more than any of these series to scare you?
Jason Wiese writes feature stories for CinemaBlend. His occupation results from years dreaming of a filmmaking career, settling on a "professional film fan" career, studying journalism at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, MO (where he served as Culture Editor for its student-run print and online publications), and a brief stint of reviewing movies for fun. He would later continue that side-hustle of film criticism on TikTok (@wiesewisdom), where he posts videos on a semi-weekly basis. Look for his name in almost any article about Batman.