{"id":952438,"date":"2026-10-30T23:02:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T23:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/952438\/"},"modified":"2026-10-30T23:02:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T23:02:09","slug":"what-does-it-take-to-make-original-horror-work-on-tv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/952438\/","title":{"rendered":"What does it take to make original horror work on TV?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prime Video\u2019s Carrie<\/a> and Peacock\u2019s Crystal Lake<\/a> share a narrative Achilles\u2019 heel. It is, unfortunately and paradoxically, rooted in their premises and primary selling points: The promise of fleshing out and refreshing the lore of two legends of horror\u2014Carrie\u2019s titular telekinetic<\/a> and original Friday The 13th slasher Pamela Voorhees<\/a> (Linda Cardellini). Leaning on their popular and well-trodden source material, the shows overextend their respective universes and set up flimsy justifications for the monstrous actions of their. These troubles are not unique to bullied teens and vengeful mothers\u2014to varying degrees, they\u2019ve plagued contemporary TV extensions of franchises as varied as IT<\/a>, Psycho<\/a>, and The Addams Family<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

To take the big-picture view, this is a symptom of a risk-averse Hollywood scraping the bottom of its IP barrels. It\u2019s studios, cable networks, and streamers chasing built-in audiences, allowing producers and writers little room for creativity and experimentation within the well-defined lines of stories that already had their heyday on the big screen or on the page. How many more menacing figures are we meant to empathize with or understand better over the course of eight episodes? (Please don\u2019t ask Ryan Murphy <\/a>this question.) And yet, horror cinema is currently as popular as it\u2019s ever been with critics, audiences, and (most shockingly of all) the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences, and that\u2019s due to inventive projects like Obsession<\/a>, Backrooms<\/a>, Weapons<\/a>, Undertone<\/a>, When Evil Lurks<\/a>, Oddity<\/a>, The Substance<\/a>, Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma<\/a>\u2026 the list goes on. Why hasn\u2019t that novelty transferred to TV to the same extent?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOriginal ideas are tricky,\u201d The Creep Tapes\u2018 Patrick Brice tells The A.V. Club. Brice speaks from the Carrie\/Crystal Lake side of things: Three seasons into the absurdly entertaining anthology he co-writes with star Mark Duplass, he now has sharper insight into the horror landscape than when he made 2014\u2019s Creep and its 2017 sequel. Bringing the movie\u2019s found-footage conceit to TV starting in 2024, The Creep Tapes depicts recordings made by the serial killer who calls himself Peachfuzz (played by Duplass); each episode captures his interactions with a different victim, allowing for a long roster of guest stars who\u2019ve included David Dastmalchian, Chris Gethard, and Terrifier 2\u2018s Elliott Fullam.<\/p>\n

\u201cA few factors allowed us to do what we did,\u201d Brice shares. \u201cFrom a strategic production and concept standpoint, it is very important right now, since so many shows are being made, to find that sweet spot where your concept is asking much less than a bigger show, but is enough to make something effective, scary, and visceral.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The other factor: They\u2019re pretty much making each episode of The Creep Tapes the same way they made Creep and Creep 2. \u201cDespite the temptation to make things bigger, one of the things that makes this show special and unique is that we maintain a sort of poverty model of filmmaking,\u201d Brice says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A horror TV show can thrive without following the blueprints of a cult-favorite movie or a spooky bestseller, though. The Creep Tapes streams alongside originals like Hell Motel and the competition series The Boulet Brothers\u2019 Dragula on Shudder. Apple TV\u2019s ingenious horror-comedy Widow\u2019s Bay made history<\/a> at this year\u2019s Emmys; Paramount+\u2019s feral Yellowjackets<\/a>, despite its ebbs and flows in quality, has drawn 10 Emmy nominations across its run. Stranger Things is one of only a handful of Netflix series to become a full-blown pop-culture phenomenon, and after it ended at the beginning of 2026, the streamer added the eccentric Something Very Bad Is Going To Happen<\/a> and creature-feature Below to its lineup. But even when an original horror concept resonates with subscribers, it might not be shown the same patience or respect as a counterpart with IP backing\u2014just ask Netflix\u2019s canceled-too-soon<\/a> The Boroughs<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And sometimes, a fresh take on the genre languishes in relative obscurity until it\u2019s given a bigger platform. From has garnered a small-but-passionate following across four seasons on MGM+, but that following has already grown considerably since the show came to Netflix in mid-October. Created by John Griffin, From takes place in an unnamed, creepy small town that traps residents and anyone who enters. Shape-shifting creatures lurk in the woods surrounding \u201cThe Township\u201d at night, forcing everyone who now lives there to team up to find a way out\u2014or die. The show\u2019s puzzle-box mystery and plentiful jump scares have kept audiences hooked since its 2022 debut. Still, Griffin tells The A.V. Club that, after he initially wrote the pilot in 2016, he didn\u2019t go around selling it as \u201csome great new horror show.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI got the same response about how it was a great script, but there\u2019s no show there,\u201d he says. Once executive producer John Pinkner and producer-director Jack Bender\u2014both of whom, like From star Harold Perrineau, are veterans of Lost\u2014signed on, the show\u2019s unsettling, character-driven, and long-term premise snapped into focus: \u201ca giant Twilight Zone<\/a> episode,\u201d as the trio put it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a good starting point for that sustainability to make a show that would be about reality being stripped away and your life turning into a nightmare,\u201d Griffin says. \u201cWe can roll back the layers of that horror so it evolves season after season for the characters we\u2019ve known.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bender notes that every episode has a point where the writers stop and ask themselves, \u201cHow do we make this scary? \u201cBut we\u2019re not starting with that,\u201d he says. \u201cWe use horror as a metaphor that makes a human story pop.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

From\u2018s slow-burn, atmospheric dread remains intact as mystical trees and supernatural beings are added to the mix, with season four firmly focused on the paranoia and psychological trauma of being confined. \u201cMy favorite shows have always been where I get to live with the characters like in Six Feet Under or Lost. So it\u2019s rewarding to do that within the scope of this particular nightmare in the horror space,\u201d Griffin says of From\u2018s serialized approach, which sets it apart from single-season horror dramas and anthologies\u2014like AMC\u2019s The Terror and Syfy\u2019s Channel Zero\u2014 that followed in the wake of American Horror Story.<\/p>\n

The Creep Tapes splits the difference between these approaches, tracing the further, gnarly misadventures of its antagonist, but matching each new victim to a different satirical target or another: A horror clich\u00e9 like the final girl one week, the explosion of true-crime documentaries another week. \u201cWe think of what situations might be interesting to see this particular character in, and seeing which six of those are diverse enough in subject matter and how it fits into the season overall,\u201d Brice says. \u201cIn that way, we can have a laser target on our audience and a dedicated fan base, and get to hit subgenres within horror.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

As for those bigger shows or platforms, Brice says that being on Shudder potentially allows The Creep Tapes to cultivate a fandom in a way that the show might not have on a higher-profile streamer. Still, he notes: \u201cIt\u2019s one of the beautiful things about this genre that there are larger entities, but we can co-exist, and they can feel like peers.\u201d To wit, he points out that Kate Siegel guest-starred in a season three episode this year because she and her husband and frequent collaborator, Carrie showrunner Mike Flanagan, reached out as fans. \u201cMike asked to be a victim at some point and to come and join us. We said, That would be great, but can we cast your wife first?\u201d Brice jokes.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, From EP Pinkner posits that the reason these shows\u2014IP-based or not\u2014still work, ironically, is that \u201cHorror feels safer. You can turn it off when it\u2019s over, unlike the real world. And if the marketplace supports itself in these circumstances, people are going to chase that success.\u201d Perhaps that\u2019s why From has kept itself going in the current climate. Griffin acknowledges he still has to remind himself of the good fortune of getting to keep playing in this sandbox, particularly because the show arrived amid the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic. It\u2019s why Griffin says he didn\u2019t give the whole \u201coriginal\u201d talk a lot of consideration at the time, but adds, \u201cIn retrospect now, it\u2019s very rewarding to have an original piece out there that has the type of following it does.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Saloni Gajjar is The A.V. Club\u2018s TV critic. To make sure you\u2019re seeing more of her writing about the TV worth watching, add The A.V. Club as a preferred source on Google<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prime Video\u2019s Carrie and Peacock\u2019s Crystal Lake share a narrative Achilles\u2019 heel. It is, unfortunately and paradoxically, rooted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":952439,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,75,337],"class_list":["post-952438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=952438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952438\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/952439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=952438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=952438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=952438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}