The Best Sci-Fi Horror Shows on Netflix: A Guide to the Most Terrifying Original Series

Some people like sci-fi. Quite a lot of them love it even better when there are some horror elements in the story. And with horror, viewers fear many things as well. You may think zombies are frightening, but your friends find them ridiculous. Space monsters might be terrifying for a certain group of audience, while others see aliens as nothing more than make-believe creatures – to each their own. And Netflix is trying to please them all. While it’s always nice to see the large variety of sci-fi horror shows on Netflix any day of the week, sometimes you have to dig deep into the listing to find a few hidden gems.

All of Us Are Dead

A local school in the city of Hyosan, South Korea, is overrun by zombies following an experiment by a science teacher. Things soon turn from bad to worse when the zombies escape and begin terrorizing the neighborhood. The authorities are trying their best, but are overwhelmed. A group of students still find themselves trapped inside the school; they must work together and use their best wits to get to safety. Of course, being a high school sci-fi horror, you can always expect a healthy dose of teen drama as well. We know there’s nothing excitingly new about the premise here, but it doesn’t mean the series is any less entertaining than its more popular counterparts.

Greenhouse Academy

Months after the tragic death of their astronaut mother in a spaceship accident, Haley and Alex become students at the Greenhouse Academy, a prestigious boarding school designed for gifted future leaders. It doesn’t take long after the enrollment for the siblings to drift apart from each other. It’s not entirely their fault, however, since they’re placed in competing houses in the academy. As you’ve probably guessed, they’re now bitter rivals and their relationship is becoming more strained than ever. When some inexplicable events happen, students from the two competing houses are inevitably drawn into some sort of secret investigation. It turns out that the academy is involved in a sinister plan to use earthquakes to earn money. Only by working together can they understand the mystery.

Greenhouse Academy is full of overused clichés and the dialogues can get very awkward. Also, it might not be the most terrifying series ever on Netflix, but it’s not totally unwatchable either. In fact, you might find it pleasant instead of scary.

Mindhunter

While the series is more of a psychological thriller than sci-fi horror, the storyline doesn’t really stray too far away from the latter. Mindhunter is based on Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit (1995), a true-crime book written by John E. Douglas and Mark Olshaker.

The first season focuses on a team of investigators trying to devise a better method to profile murderers, whereas the second season deals primarily with how much of a murderer’s motives and train of thoughts will remain in the realm of the unknown. But the overall plot is pretty simple: FBI agents Bill Tench and Holden Ford are working together with psychologist Wendy Carr, under the bureau’s BSU (Behavioral Science Unit), to spearhead research into the minds of serial killers. The end goal is to use the knowledge and information from the already imprisoned murderers to solve cases.

The Innocents

Harry and June run away from their families after knowing that June’s father is planning to take her out of town, far from everyone she knows. The night before it happens, the young couple decide to leave their homes together. What they don’t know is that June’s father has a very good, specific reason to take her away. June has developed an unusual power; this is something that she herself and her boyfriend have to witness with their own eyes to believe. When she’s about to get kidnapped by an unknown man, she suddenly shape-shifts into the man. She is a shape-shifter, copying the form of a person nearby, rendering that person incapacitated. And because of that power, June is targeted by a scientist who wants to discover the key to her abilities.

We think sci-fi horror remains a bit of an under-represented subgenre on TV. Yes, there are plenty of zombies anywhere in movies and books with their creative storytelling ideas and sci-fi trappings, but with small screen entertainment, the subgenre isn’t as varied and multifaceted as we all want it to be. Netflix has been busy adding more of it to the catalog; while there’s nothing wrong with it, some viewers worry that the streaming service has been putting quantity over quality lately. However, in the bigger scheme of things, Netflix isn’t the only one suffering from the syndrome. All the cable channels and streaming services do the same thing. If you offer dozens of different series each year, chances are some of them end up at the bottom of the viewership list. All the series mentioned above are probably not the very best even in Netflix’s own listing (remember Stranger Things and LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS?), but they do have their own audience. You’re under no obligation to give any of them a try, but kudos to Netflix for striving for variety.

Do you have any favorite underrated shows on Netflix? Is there any episode of Mindhunter you don’t particularly like? We’d love to hear from you.

Other Things You Might Want to Know

Must watch sci-fi horror on Netflix:

The Thing (1982)
A Quiet Place (2018)
Under the Skin (2013)
They Live (1988)
The Host (2006)
Pitch Black (2000)

A few of the upcoming Netflix originals:

Series	Genre	Expected Release
Adolescence	Drama	2025
The Choice	Political Thriller
The Undertow	Crime drama
The Witness	Crime drama
Running Point	Sports comedy
Long Story Short	Comedy
Devil May Cry	Dark fantasy action
Leviathan	Historical drama
Astérix and Obélix: The Big Fight	Historical action-adventure
Motel Transylvania	Horror comedy
Wolf King	Epic fantasy adventure