What if the most embarrassing moment you’ve ever experienced helped you uncover an international criminal conspiracy? That’s the premise of the weirdest, if perhaps not the scariest, TV show of 2025. So as huge fans of Tim Robinson, we had to include his Lynchian HBO drama in our ranking of the best spooky shows this year. But sitting alongside The Chair Company are some modern horror classics. Two titans of the genre, Alien and It, got surprisingly great streaming spinoffs in 2025. Meanwhile, Netflix brought back both Stranger Things and Black Mirror to ensure scares for everyone, whether you fear dystopian technology of Lovecraftian monsters. Also, Marvel Zombies was surprisingly good!
Below, you’ll find Polygon’s picks for the 10 best horror TV shows of 2025. And if you don’t think The Chair Company belongs on this list, well, clearly you’ve never fallen on your ass in front of 100 coworkers; pure nightmare fuel.
10
Dexter: Resurrection
Dexter is arguably the most unbalanced franchise of all time. The first four seasons of the original run are extremely watchable, blood-spattered fun, but after that, the quality quickly falls off a cliff. In 2021, Dexter: New Blood gave the story of insatiable killer Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall) the ending it deserved, which is why Dexter: Resurrection came as a bit of a shock. (Spoiler alert: Dexter dies at the end of New Blood.)
Thankfully, Resurrection was worth the price of bringing Dexter back from the dead. By moving the story to New York City and introducing a literal murderer’s row of new killers (played by the likes of Krysten Ritter, Neil Patrick Harris, and David Dasmaltchian), Resurrection upped the stakes and helped push the overall franchise back into “good” territory. —Jake Kleinman
9
The Creep Tapes season 2
If you haven’t seen the Creep films, they are found-footage horror movies starring Mark Duplass as Josef, a serial killer who lures in videographers to help him make a movie only to butcher them while filming on his own. They are excellent and horrifying small-budget thrillers that almost never relent in leaving you feeling deeply unsettled. Duplass then took that recipe and turned it into the Shudder original series The Creep Tapes.
The Creep Tapes, which just wrapped its second season, is exactly what it sells itself as. We are watching more of Josef’s homemade movies, which end in a murder of some sort. However, The Creep Tapes also lets the audience in on more information about Josef and including introducing his family. The series has already been renewed for a third season, while a third Creep film remains planned for once the show is over to wrap up the story. —Chris Hayner
8
Yellowjackets season 3
Yellowjackets remains one of the most lurid and horrifying shows to watch on television, and we do mean that as a compliment. The supernatural cannibal thriller follows two different timelines: 1996, when a group of teenage survivors is stuck in the wilderness after their plane crashes; and 25 years later in present day, as the survivors attempt to move on after their harrowing ordeal.
Series creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson had one hell of a job on their hands in once more balancing two different timelines to make them cohesive and complementary to one another, while also ramping up the drama to keep audiences coming back for more. On that front, Yellowjackets season 3 was a success, delivering a jaw-dropping story from the beginning up until the very last shot. —Aimee Hart
7
Black Mirror season 7
After two lackluster seasons, Black Mirror returned to form in season 7 with a fresh batch of episodes that delivered creator Charlie Brooker’s trademark mix of techno-dystopian commentary, genuine horror, and human emotion.
“Common People” shows off Brooker’s ability to really dig into the darkest ways human nature corrupts the potential of technology with a heartbreaking episode digging into medical debt and enshitification. But the season also demonstrates how the anthology series has grown beyond sci-fi horror. Black Mirror’s first true sequel, “USS Callister: Into Infinity,” delivers another chilling performance from Jesse Plemons that’s also hilarious at times, while the best episode of the season, “Eulogy,” eschews horror entirely for a sentimental look at regret and memory led by Paul Giamatti. Black Mirror has proved disturbingly prophetic since premiering in 2011, and it’s impressive to see how it’s adapted as technology has advanced and the world has gotten even darker. —Samantha Nelson
6
The Last of Us season 2
Showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann’s post-apocalyptic adaptation of Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us stuck close to the game in its first season, effectively building the sweet but complex foundations of the relationship between Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey). Season 2 had the opportunity to go bigger, and Mazin and Druckmann jumped at that chance, delivering a follow-up that wasn’t afraid to make changes without erasing the heart and soul of the story established in the video game franchise.
Set five years after season 1, Joel and Ellie have settled down in a new community in Jackson, Wyoming. However, their relationship is put to the test thanks to new enemies, hardships, and old truths coming to light. In The Last of Us season 2, the cycle of violence and the danger of tribalism are expertly explored to a degree that some may find uncomfortable, but only further proves how necessary a topic it is to tackle. —AH
5
Marvel Zombies
Years of dormancy and a premiere date at what may have been Marvel’s lowest cultural point since the pre-Iron Man days made hype for Marvel Zombies unusually nonexistent. Maybe to its benefit — the four-episode miniseries from writer Zeb Wells (Robot Chicken, Deadpool & Wolverine) offered a down-and-dirty expansion of the What If…? zombie episode with an added bonus of being even more mind-boggling with its alt-universe lore. Everyone from the Young Avengers to Blade Knight to Scott Lang’s disembodied head to Chadwick Boseman’s T’Challa (in a non-speaking appearance that assured his time with the character persisted), all made it into an epic battle against Wanda Maximoff, now the Queen of the Dead. A glimpse into what a hard-R Marvel chapter could really look like, Marvel Zombies was pure orgiastic splash page nonsense… and better for it. There was no twist untwisted, no imaginative creation left on the floor. Even for making almost no sense, a what’s-really-going-on ending packed a punch for a character who hasn’t been given her due in the actual MCU. It’s proof Marvel has unlimited potential in the animated medium — and should go as hard as possible when they take advantage. —Matt Patches
4
Stranger Things season 5 (so far)
The Duffer Brothers are impressively threading the needle in the final season of Stranger Things by upping the stakes and revealing the truth behind the show’s core mysteries while still staying focused on delivering strong character arcs. Adding new characters this late in the game would be a mistake for most shows, but a larger role for Holly Wheeler (Nell Fisher) and the antics of Derek Turnbow (Jake Connelly) help make Stranger Things feel like it’s coming full circle.
The original Party are now grizzled veterans of monster hunting who can teach a new group of kids to find the courage to battle monsters and save Hawkins. If Stranger Things actually delivers a satisfying finale, it will earn a place as one of the best horror shows of all time. —SN
3
The Chair Company
Tim Robinson’s comedy, from his laugh-track-backed SNL days to the hyper-personal sketches of I Think You Should Leave, has consistently skated the line between funny and terrifying. The Chair Company finds the absurdist and his writing partner Zach Kanin crossing the threshold into straight-up horror of the David Lynch ilk. A Twin Peaks for sloppy steak eaters, the HBO series stars Robinson as Ron Trosper, a variant of his patented Everyman Weirdo character, this time employed at a property development firm. During a company-wide presentation, Ron sits on a broken chair and stumbles to the floor. Most people would brush it off and move on. Ron embarks on an investigation of the chair manufacturer that leads him into the bowels of hell and subsumes every side of his life at home.
Peppered throughout The Chair Company’s unexpectedly mesmerizing and creepy mystery are bits straight out of I Think You Should Leave. Ron has a darling wife, beautiful kids, and is at the top of his field, but each step of his investigation brings him closer to the socially inept ITYSL guy who took a magician’s joke too personally. Each half hour of the eight-episode first season has a new “You Have No Good Ideas” guy that hijacks Ron’s life, then returns, somehow, to normal Earth outside of a two-minute bit. That Robinson and Kanin concocted a psychologically twisty and twisted plot that can actually host them all is a miracle. And it’s genuinely terrifying: any of these people could live in your neighborhood. This could happen to your chair. —MP
2
It: Welcome to Derry
When It: Welcome to Derry was first announced, Bill Skarsgård’s return as Pennywise was far from guaranteed, requiring some persuasion from creator Andy Muschietti to bring him back. Many fans assumed the iconic villain would be used sparingly. Instead, Pennywise looms large, with the series digging directly into the monster’s origins.
Anchored by Skarsgård’s unsettling presence, the It prequel series is further elevated by a standout cast of young actors and a deliberate focus on Black and Indigenous stories, resulting in a return to Derry, Maine that confidently stands alongside the two blockbuster films that inspired it. The HBO Max show’s first season is set in 1962 and explores the town’s long, violent history and the cyclical nature of the evil that feeds on it. As a group of young residents begin to notice patterns of disappearances and unexplained horrors, they slowly uncover the truth behind Derry’s darkest secret and the ancient force that awakens whenever fear takes hold. —Isaac Rouse
1
Alien: Earth
Before Alien: Earth’s debut, I had my doubts. On the one slimy Xenomorph hand, did we really need an Alien prequel series? (Especially when Alien director Ridley Scott had already done just that.) On the other hand, showrunner Noah Hawley faced the exact same scrutiny when he turned Fargo into an FX show, and he proved everything wrong with that show.
Ultimately, both instincts were right. Hawley pulled off something unique and captivating, mainly by expanding its extraterrestrials beyond the Xenomorph to include other creatures, including a super-intelligent eyeball monster. But he also pushed the limits of what audiences could tolerate, with a story that moved slowly at times and ended with a whimper. Still, the overall experience of Alien: Earth was a great one thanks to some excellent acting, disturbing deaths, and one standout episode. —JK
