5 Best Horror Series on Netflix With High Rotten Tomatoes Score

Modern filmmakers are turning to horror not to exploit audiences' natural fears, but to have serious conversations about loneliness, childhood trauma, loss, and social injustice.

Here are five critically acclaimed horror series to binge on Netflix.

1. Kingdom, 2019-2020

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 98%

South Korea, late 16th century. A fierce power struggle is brewing in the Joseon Kingdom. The current king is terminally ill. At least that's what his retinue says. The crown prince is desperately trying to get an audience with his father, but the monarch's pregnant wife and her father are constantly disrupting the relatives' meetings.

The ruler's "illness" must be hidden until the new queen gives birth to an heir. Otherwise, his first son will take the throne. It doesn't matter that the king himself has long since become a zombie.

Kingdom not only manages to balance genres, but also pays attention to the representation of national traditions on screen. The series is as good as a grand costume drama as it is a first-class zombie horror.

2. Marianne, 2019

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 100%

Successful horror writer Emma decides to make a career change and finish her popular series of novels about the witch Marianne, which helped her overcome a childhood trauma. But after the publication of the last book, tragic circumstances force her to return to her hometown – the source of all her phobias.

There she faces a twist in the spirit of her own novels: one of the women claims that Marianne has possessed her and that she will terrorize Emma's family until she starts writing horror stories about the witch again.

3. Archive 81, 2022

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 87%

Dan, who lost his family in a fire, never recovered from the loss. This led him to become an archivist who restores VHS tapes. His work helps people preserve the happy family memories he was robbed of.

One day, a large corporation asks Dan to digitize the film that was destroyed in the fire. Hundreds of hours of archival footage on which documentary filmmaker Melody conducts an investigation into a mysterious cult that operated in the 1990s. Melody's past is mystically intertwined with Dan's present.

4. The Haunting of Hill House, 2018

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93%

Before Mike Flanagan, Shirley Jackson's novel had been adapted twice for the screen. However, it was the ten-hour series that became the most beloved by viewers and marked the beginning of a long-term collaboration between Mike Flanagan and Netflix.

An old Gothic mansion, within whose walls the tragic story of a family unfolds. At first glance, the Crains, who moved into the estate in the early 1990s, seem like the perfect family. Loving parents, kind children.

But nowadays, close relatives, each of whom carries a baggage of fears and traumas, avoid meeting each other. The suicide of the younger sister brings the whole family together, and the now-grown Crains must confront not only each other, but also the horrors of the past that happened to them in the cursed house.

5. Midnight Mass, 2021

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 87%

After the triumph of The Haunting of Hill House and the less successful but still good The Haunting of Bly Manor, Mike Flanagan made Midnight Mass, a creepy story about a small town where a new charismatic pastor comes to live.

In a leisurely manner, scary not because of screams and blood, but because of the atmosphere of a place left on the edge of civilization, he carefully studies the topics of religion, faith and fanaticism and how close these concepts are to each other.