The Evolution of Sci-Fi Horror on Netflix: From 'Hemlock Grove' to 'The Haunting of Bly Manor’

Sci-fi horror is supposed to require a proper mixture of the two genres in the plotline, but that’s not always the case today. Even if your show is mainly supernatural horror, but it incorporates a few sci-fi elements, you can now proudly classify it as sci-fi horror. While “genre labeling” might not be as important as the story itself, chances are most viewers would appreciate proper categorization. Fortunately, not every single show is like this; many films and series categorized under sci-fi horror on Netflix are actually pretty accurate. That being said, these two examples might give you an idea of what we’re on about.

Hemlock Grove

It’s definitely horror, with a small dose of science fiction injected into the drama. To be more precise, Hemlock Grove is a supernatural whodunit drama: someone (or something) is hunting down teenage girls in town, and everyone thinks that the recently moved gypsy family is the culprit. And then just after a few episodes, you realize that the entire town is inhabited by too many weird people to where you can’t rule out anybody from suspicion.

At first glance, Hemlock Grove appears like a nice bench positioned on a bridge in the middle of True Blood and The Vampire Diaries. It has everything you could ever want from a mixture of science fiction and horror: sinister medical corporation, a Frankenstein monster, werewolves, hunters, grotesque biological horror, and more than enough display of violence. Hemlock Grove has a little of everything, and the story ends up appearing like a strange concoction of genres.

There are plenty of disturbing scenes, shady medical experiments, murders, family scandals, and a good deal of oddness you can expect from the series. It’s as if Hemlock Grove is trying to kill too many birds with one stone. A lot of different things are scattered all over the place and the plot sometimes gets frustratingly unpredictable. Despite all that, it always goes back to its actual trapping of a mystery soap opera. If you like your urban fantasy sprinkled with blood splatter horror, Hemlock Grove doesn’t disappoint.

The Haunting of Bly Manor

Mike Flanagan is now considered one of the best horror writers in recent years, partly thanks to the multi-series deal with Netflix. It’s not that the deal itself makes him a better writer, but the five shows commissioned by the streaming service have allowed him to explore deeper into his own creative mind and craft spooky stories in unique ways. The Haunting of Bly Manor is the second entry of the five-show deal. It’s mostly an adaptation of The Turn of the Screw (1898), a novella by Henry James, added with a few extra elements.

Set in the late 1980s, the story focuses on a young American named Dani, who has just been hired by Henry Wingrave as an au pair for his orphaned nephew and niece living in the Bly Manor. Dani doesn’t know that the manor is haunted. Living with them in the manor are the housekeeper, Mrs. Grose, Chef Owen, and groundskeeper Jamie. As Dani struggles with her own personal demons, she also realizes that the children are different. And her journey to uncover the manor’s dark past begins.

Although supernatural ghosts definitely have a forceful presence in the story, and the atmosphere is just as unsettling as it can be, Flanagan himself prefers to pitch the series as a love story, especially the gothic romance kind. The terror is mostly delivered because the ghosts are always there as parts of the characters’ grief, psychological damage, and terrible past that prevent them from moving forward. The ghosts keep on re-experiencing some of the most tragic parts of their life stories repeatedly in the world of the living.

Now, is The Haunting of Bly Manor considered sci-fi? Most people would probably say, “No. There isn’t even a tiny shred of sci-fi element in the series.” But some fans out there are adamant that the series also talks about “getting stuck in time” and therefore you can categorize it under sci-fi as well. It’s not explicitly mentioned, but the trope is there.

Evolved Sci-Fi Horror Offerings

Hemlock Grove certainly does have some of the most established sci-fi tropes, namely shady medical experiments and some sort of Frankenstein monster. The Haunting of Bly Manor is an outright supernatural horror despite its thin “stuck-in-time” element. But that doesn’t prevent some fans from insisting that it is a proper sci-fi horror.

In between Hemlock Grove (2013 – 2015) and The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020), Netflix did manage to deliver praiseworthy sci-fi series including Stranger Things (2016 – present), The OA (2016 – 2019), and Black Mirror (2011 – present). This kind of progression actually follows the trajectory of the subgenre from a proper blend of science fiction and horror elements in the story to some sporadic mixture of little tropes here and there. As Netflix continues to expand its offerings, it’s sad to see how sci-fi horror has turned into a cheap label given too many shows that are predominantly horror, with little sci-fi, if at all.

We think science fiction has been associated with horror since the days of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The subgenre enjoyed massive growth and gave rise to popular tropes like aliens invading earth, monsters escaping from medical facilities, zombie virus, evil robots, etc. Nowadays, however, it seems like all those classic tropes have all been exhaustively used and turned into clichés. It’s not that easy to find a new creative story arc for sci-fi horror, and yet people are openly hungry about new creative ideas. One thing leads to another, this has brought about the proliferation of a random “genre labeling” practice.

What do you think is the most characteristically sci-fi horror series on Netflix? Can you name some series that actually don’t match their genre labeling? We’d love to hear from you.

Other Thing You Might Want to Know

According to the Time Magazine, here are some of the worst sci-fi and horror movie titles (not the movies, just the titles) of all time:

House II: The Second Story (1987)
Attack of the Puppet People (1958)
I Dismember Mama (1974)
Death Bed: The Bed That Eats (1977)
Sssssss (1973)
Robot Monster (1953)
Frankenstein Conquers the World (1966)
Orgy of the Dead (1965)
Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)
The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (1959)
The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!? (1964)
The Astro-Zombies (1968)