Netflix’s original TV shows cover every major genre, but few have thrived on streaming quite like horror. The platform has spent years assembling a treasure trove of small-screen nightmares, delivering original stories that push boundaries and lean into truly chilling imagery. Horror fans have never had more high-quality options at their fingertips.
However, while many subscribers immediately recognize Netflix’s biggest horror shows, including its acclaimed library of Mike Flanagan series, one of its most disturbing gems slipped out with surprisingly little fanfare in 2019. It didn’t arrive with the marketing push of a prestige release, yet it quickly proved to be something far more terrifying than most expected.
For Netflix subscribers seeking their next horror obsession, Marianne should be at the top of the list. The French series has earned a rare 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes, and for good reason. It stands as one of the scariest stories ever to grace TV screens, blending folklore, psychological torment, and unrelenting tension into a relentless nightmare.
What Is Marianne About?
A Possessed Novelist’s Return Home Unleashes A Nightmare She Can No Longer Control
Easily one of the best international Netflix shows,Marianne follows successful horror author Emma Larsimon (Victoire Du Bois), whose bestselling novels revolve around a malevolent witch named Marianne. Emma has built her career on dark fiction, but she’s grown tired of the character consuming her life. When she announces she’s ending the series, a disturbing encounter with a childhood acquaintance forces her to reconsider everything she thinks she knows about her own work.
After witnessing a horrifying act seemingly inspired by her writing, Emma returns to her hometown to confront the past she tried to outrun. What she finds is a community plagued by strange phenomena, unsettling behavior, and a growing sense that Marianne may not be a creation of her imagination at all. The entity haunting her stories appears to exist in the real world, targeting Emma and the people she grew up with.
Above all else, Marianne blends supernatural horror with psychological trauma, using Emma’s unraveling mental state to heighten the dread. Each episode digs deeper into the mythology surrounding the witch, unveiling a curse with roots in centuries-old folklore.
Viewers curious about the 2019 Netflix show can expect jump scares, grotesque imagery, and an atmosphere thick with anxiety. Marianne leans into classic possession tropes, yet its execution is sharp, modern, and uncomfortably intense, offering a narrative where the boundary between fiction and reality collapses in increasingly terrifying ways.
Marianne Is Not An Easy Watch
The Unrelenting Netflix Show Pushes Its Scares To Visceral And Unsettling Extremes
Netflix’s Marianne quickly establishes itself as extreme horror, embracing a tone that rarely allows viewers to breathe. Its scares are relentless, ranging from nightmarish practical effects to disturbing character transformations that linger long after each episode ends. The Netflix horror treats fear as a constant presence rather than an occasional punctuation mark, sustaining tension through pacing, sound design, and brutally effective imagery.
Much of Marianne’s terror springs from Marianne herself, an entity that manipulates reality with unnerving ease. Whether appearing through innocent bystanders or manifesting in grotesque forms, she embodies the kind of horror that feels unpredictable and unstoppable. The town’s residents, many of whom share twisted connections to Emma’s past, deepen the sense of dread as their behavior becomes more erratic and violent.
The emotional intensity is just as striking. Emma is tormented not only by Marianne but also by guilt, repressed memories, and a childhood trauma she refuses to confront. The result is a TV show that blends supernatural scares with psychological horror, creating an experience as emotionally draining as it is visually terrifying.
This is not a show for casual viewers. It’s designed to disturb, unsettle, and shock, confidently pushing boundaries rarely seen in mainstream TV horror. For Netflix subscribers who crave fearless, full-throttle terror, Marianne delivers one of the most haunting experiences available on streaming.
Netflix Has Become The Best Streaming Service For Horror Enthusiasts
Netflix’s Expanding Horror Lineup Makes It The Genre’s Most Reliable Streaming Home
While Marianne stands out as one of Netflix’s scariest horror TV shows, it’s far from the platform’s only standout. Netflix has steadily built the strongest catalog of original horror series available in the age of streaming, offering a diverse selection that covers haunted houses, supernatural mythology, psychological horror, creature features, and more. Its investment in the genre has resulted in some of the decade’s most acclaimed small-screen nightmares.
Much of Netflix’s reputation comes from its partnership with creator Mike Flanagan, who delivered The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor, Midnight Mass, and The Fall of the House of Usher. These series helped elevate prestige horror on television, each blending emotional storytelling with chilling thematic depth. However, the platform’s horror library extends well beyond these hits.
International horror has also flourished on Netflix. Shows like All of Us Are Dead, Hellbound, and Kingdom offer fresh voices and inventive scares that stand apart from Western genre norms. Meanwhile, cult favorites such as Archive 81 and Brand New Cherry Flavor show that Netflix continues to experiment with formats and tones, appealing to a wide range of horror tastes.
With its growing archive of originals and international gems, Netflix has become the most dependable home for horror fans. Marianne remains one of its crown jewels, a reminder that some of the genre’s best modern horror stories are hiding in plain sight on the world’s biggest streaming service.
- Release Date
-
2019 – 2019-00-00
- Network
-
Netflix
- Directors
-
Samuel Bodin
- Writers
-
Quoc Dang Tran
