Apple TV's Best Thrillers Prove They Need To Focus On The Horror Genre Next

For a long time, Apple TV has had great shows that nobody is watching. It's not really the streamer's fault as Netflix won the streaming wars long ago and today boasts more than 300 million subscribers. That dwarfs every competitor, with Amazon's Prime Video coming in a distant second with 200 million subs. Where does Apple TV sit in the rankings? 13th (as per FlixPatrol). The service has a comparatively paltry 30 million subscribers, which according to the list, is less than Disney+, HBO Max, Paramount+, Peacock, and even something called "SonyLiv."

Put simply, then, in the grand scheme of things, nobody is watching Apple TV — at least compared to how many people are watching Netflix. That's a real shame. On the one hand, it's hard to feel sorry for the biggest tech company in the world, which will no doubt have a hand in establishing the AI garbage future that awaits. On the other hand, Apple TV has some outstanding shows that absolutely deserve a bigger audience.

How might Tim Cook and co. manage to snag a few viewers from competitors? Well, one way might be to make the next big horror hit. It might seem counterintuitive given how the genre isn't everybody's cup of tea, but horror is the last big hurdle Apple TV needs to overcome to have one of the best, most well-rounded streaming catalogs in the game.

Anybody despairing at the absolute mountain of crud being churned out by Netflix surely isn't alone. The service provides plenty of quality film and TV products (Lily James and Riz Ahmed's excellent crime thriller recently hit the top 10 charts), but these gems are often buried by the sheer volume of half-baked streaming nonsense being pumped onto the servers. Apple TV is the opposite.

The streamer's catalog is nowhere near as expansive as Netflix's, but there's a clear focus on quality over quantity. Apple TV has followed a very HBO-esque route by consistently providing premium TV series, from feel-good shows like "Ted Lasso" and "Shrinking" to sci-fi standouts like "Invasion," "Pluribus," and TV's trippiest mind-bender, "Severance." Those looking for thrillers won't be disappointed either, as the Taron Egerton-led "Blackbird" is a must-watch. Meanwhile, Apple TV is home to the best spy show on TV in "Slow Horses," a series so good it puts pretty much everything else on the small screen to shame.

The missing piece here is horror. Apple TV has given us the likes of the M. Night Shyamalan-produced psychological horror "Servant," which ran for four seasons. It's also given us horror drama miniseries "Lisey's Story," which was based on the Stephen King novel of the same name and starred Julianne Moore and Clive Owen. "Servant" was critically-acclaimed while "Lisey's Story" was met with more middling reviews. But neither really made much of an impact in the way "Severance" or "Ted Lasso" did. If Apple can land another hit with a horror series, it would do nothing but help the service and hopefully bring more attention to the streamer's other overlooked series. Thankfully, the timing couldn't be better.

In 2025, "Stranger Things" came to a close with a finale that also received a major theatrical release and cemented the show's standing as the biggest streaming series in history. Meanwhile, HBO debuted the "It" prequel series "It: Welcome to Derry," which dominated the streamer's Top 10 charts and, according to the company, was a big success (though it hasn't shown up on the Nielsen charts since its debut). Before "Welcome to Derry," HBO had another hit with "The Last of Us," which came in the wake of multiple small-screen horror successes such as "Black Mirror," Netflix's "The Haunting of Hill House," and, of course, AMC's "The Walking Dead."

Meanwhile, horror remains reliably popular in general. From "Weapons" and "28 Years Later" to "Frankenstein" and "Companion," the genre doesn't look like it will fall out of favor with movie-goers any time soon. Given these movies have done just as well once they hit streaming services (like when "Weapons" found new fans on HBO Max), clearly TV viewers are just as hungry for horror.

Thus far, Apple hasn't managed to match any of these successes in the horror space, but doing so would be a major win for the company. Some of Apple TV's darkest thrillers, like "Blackbird" and its other Taron Egerton-starring series, "Smoke," have tipped into darker territory without becoming outright horror. If Apple can go even darker, give us something to be scared of, and finally find a horror hit, there will be no excuse for viewers not to sign up and maybe even kill off their Netflix subscription. Given that Netflix has become so horrifyingly expensive, that's a very good thing.