15 TV Shows Like The Twilight Zone You Need To Watch Next

“There’s a fifth dimension, past that which is understood to man. It’s a dimension as huge as area and as timeless as infinity. It’s the center floor between gentle and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his data. That is the dimension of creativeness. It’s an space which we name The Twilight Zone.”

This introductory speech, spoken by host and creator Rod Serling, started each episode of “The Twilight Zone,” the beloved and influential tv collection that ran from 1959 by way of 1964. An anthology collection, this system offered self-contained tales of anguish, curiosity, and the human situation, usually rendered by way of the style prisms of science fiction or horror. It is one of many nice TV reveals, one which’s reverberated all through the medium’s historical past.

And in case you’re seeking to enter dimensions past the fifth one, look no additional. Listed here are 15 TV reveals like “The Twilight Zone” it’s worthwhile to watch subsequent — reveals that play with related anthology varieties, style tones, or allegorical examinations of what it means to be alive.

Initially starting its run in 1955, 4 years earlier than the reign of “The Twilight Zone,” “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” is a necessary look ahead to followers of anthology storytelling, genre-blending writing, or tv historical past generally, because the WGA referred to as it one of many 101 best reveals of all time.

One have a look at the present’s intro, and it isn’t onerous to see its instant affect on “The Twilight Zone.” Scored to the long-lasting strains of Charles Gounod’s “Funeral March of a Marionette,” Hitchcock enters body, hits his signature silhouette, then treats the viewers to a high-status but cheeky speech about what we’re about to see.

From there, it is off to the races. Its episodes are self-contained tales, often with a chilling bend, that includes now-known actors like Clint Eastwood, Robert Redford, and Jessica Tandy (and directed by the likes of Robert Altman, William Friedkin, and Hitchcock himself). Certainly one of its best episodes is “Man From the South,” by which Steve McQueen takes a wager from a certainly unstable Peter Lorre that he cannot gentle a cigarette lighter 10 occasions in a row. From this straightforward idea, bitterly ironic and grotesque twists are taken, resulting in a devastating climax.

Netflix’s “Black Mirror” is probably going the inheritor obvious to “The Twilight Zone,” because it tells standalone tales that zero in on expertise as our best supply of hysteria and destruction. And in case you watch all of those episodes, you may must admit “Black Mirror” has a degree.

Created by Charlie Brooker and operating from 2011 to the current day, “Black Mirror” tackles our dependancy to smartphones, our corruptions of actuality with synthetic intelligence, our want for social media validation, and a lot extra. Notable episodes within the collection’ run embrace “USS Callister,” by which Jesse Plemons runs a poisonous VR simulation of a “Star Trek”-esque spaceship, and “Bandersnatch,” an interactive episode a couple of online game programmer shedding his grip on actuality.

However on this author’s opinion, you can begin proper with the pilot episode, a chunk of grotesque satire as trenchant as any basic “Twilight Zone” episode with a devilishly vulgar, fashionable twist. “The Nationwide Anthem” stars Rory Kinnear because the British Prime Minister. When a Royal Princess is kidnapped, the captor quickly takes to the Web demanding that the PM do one thing that’s frankly unprintable. Brace your self and luxuriate in.

“Black Mirror” tells us the Web itself is frightening and harmful. However Syfy’s “Channel Zero,” an underrated anthology horror collection, tells us the tales unfold on the Web are what we actually must be frightened about.

Created by prolific TV horror author/producer Nick Antosca (Hulu’s “Sweet”), each “Channel Zero” season relies on a preferred piece of “creepypasta,” a catch-all time period for Web-disseminated items of narrative fiction writing that typically contort into city legend or folklore. Most of these tales, which are usually within the surreal bending of actuality and tropes surrounding “misplaced media,” make for compelling and nerve-shredding items of tv.

Every season of “Channel Zero” delivers a six-episode adaptation of a distinct creepypasta. You’ll be able to ostensibly look every story up and determine the place you need to start out, however this author advocates for the start but once more. The debut season, referred to as “Candle Cove” and based mostly on Kris Straub’s influential story, stars Paul Schneider as a toddler psychologist who revisits his hometown with the suspicion that his brother’s disappearance has one thing to do with a very disturbing TV present from their youth.

The Prime Video anthology collection “Electrical Desires” relies on a group of works by prolific and influential science fiction writer Philip Ok. Dick. Lots of Dick’s works have been tailored for the display earlier than, from “Blade Runner” to “Complete Recall,” however usually with substantial modifications made to the supply materials. Right here, episode by episode, novella by brief story, Dick’s thoughts makes it to the display with extra historically devoted variations, due to a crew of government producers that features “Battlestar Galactica” scribe Ronald D. Moore and “Breaking Unhealthy” star Bryan Cranston.

The science fiction tales on show in “Electrical Desires” usually site visitors in the identical sort of speculative commentary you’d see in “The Twilight Zone,” although maybe with much less of an emphasis on horror. However these episodes nonetheless have the ability to shake you to your core, particularly the finale, “Kill All Others,” starring Mel Rodriguez as a standard man struggling by way of a dystopian future that appears like a mixture of Franz Kafka and John Carpenter.

Who’s our modern-day Hitchcock? Cinephiles could argue as a lot as they need, however Guillermo del Toro, the director of such style classics as “Pan’s Labyrinth” and “The Form of Water,” actually belongs within the dialog. Subsequently, it makes full sense that he’d topline his personal anthology collection, as Hitchcock did 70 years prior.

Netflix’s “Guillermo del Toro’s Cupboard of Curiosities” options del Toro as our host and emcee, delivering a macabre speech earlier than and after every self-contained horror play, similar to Hitchcock and Serling earlier than him. Every of those episodes is directed by an fascinating horror auteur who has both been mentored personally by del Toro (Guillermo Navarro, who received the cinematography Oscar for “Pan’s Labyrinth”), is a peer of del Toro (Vincenzo Natali, director of cult hits like “Dice” and “Splice”), or is an up-and-coming filmmaker handpicked by del Toro (Ana Lily Amirpour, who directed the enigmatic “A Woman Walks House Alone at Evening”).

These administrators give every episode cinematic verve and genuinely nightmarish imagery, making this collection seemingly the pound-for-pound scariest of this record.

Talking of modern-day horror auteurs: Mike Flanagan, maker of works like “Hush,” “Physician Sleep,” and “Midnight Mass,” delivered two standalone seasons of Netflix tv impressed by iconic horror authors.

“The Haunting of Hill Home,” impressed by Shirley Jackson’s novel of the identical identify, stars Michiel Huisman because the oldest son of the Crain household, an writer who wrote about his household’s experiences of their actually haunted-feeling childhood house. The season alternates between previous and current, delivering a few of the absolute scariest stuff dedicated to current celluloid (“The Bent-Neck Girl” is so, so unsettling), all with a human middle of heartache and generational trauma.

“The Haunting of Bly Manor,” in the meantime, is impressed by lots of Henry James’ iconic works of Gothic literature, particularly “The Flip of the Screw.” It stars Victoria Pedretti as an American au pair employed for an English household, and examines the psychological warfare that happens when ghosts make their presence identified.

These seasons are fascinating evolutions within the horror anthology format popularized by “The Twilight Zone.” Plus, Jackson’s works usually really feel like long-lost “Twilight Zone” episodes, so why not dive into her oeuvre full-force?

Touring throughout the pond, we get the landmark British anthology collection “Inside No. 9” (streaming on BritBox). Not like different episodic anthology collection on this record, this present primarily stars the identical two actors — Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, who additionally co-created and co-wrote each episode — enjoying totally different characters alongside a distinct supporting solid.

This is sensible, given Pemberton and Shearsmith’s background in sketch comedy (each are members of well-known British troupe The League of Gents). However “Inside No. 9” is not precisely a sketch comedy collection. It is usually humorous, little question, maybe sufficient to be labeled primarily as a “comedy.”

But its tone, irrespective of the person episode’s subject material, always blurs boundaries, mixing right into a sure sort of creepy surrealism, heartbreaking tragedy, or out-and-out horror. This makes the collection an unlikely however apt companion to “The Twilight Zone,” a present that’s typically funnier than it is given credit score for. A enjoyable entry episode is “Lifeless Line,” a Halloween particular that initially aired dwell. To say any extra would deny you of its many scintillating and metatextual pleasures.

From 2005 to 2007, style filmmaker Mick Garris gave his well-known and influential horror filmmaker pals carte blanche over an hour to inform no matter self-contained story they wished. That is the story of “Masters of Horror,” a Showtime collection that takes the typically buttoned-up or cerebral thrills of “The Twilight Zone” and hurtles them into the twenty first century with loads of taboo viscera.

The record of administrators compiled for the collection is astonishing. Masters like Tobe Hooper, Dario Argento, Stuart Gordon, and Ernest Dickerson get an opportunity to flex their stuff, and whereas their episodes could not hit the peaks of their filmography, they’re nonetheless efficient and curious items of horror historical past.

When you’re in search of entry factors, think about two. You could possibly attempt John Carpenter’s “Cigarette Burns,” a form of religious sequel to “Within the Mouth of Insanity,” a couple of cursed movie print that causes its viewers to go mad and kill one another. Or, for the actual sickos, take a look at Takashi Miike’s “Imprint,” a piece so transgressive that Showtime refused to air it in its preliminary run.

This is what the aforementioned del Toro has to say about “Evening Gallery,” Rod Serling’s different style anthology TV collection: “As a younger boy, I’d watch ‘Evening Gallery’ very late at night time in my grandmother’s home, after all people went to mattress. I’ve extremely vivid recollections of the collection, of the concern that enveloped me once I watched every episode.” Are you but?

Airing from 1970 to 1973, “Evening Gallery” featured host Serling as he took the viewer by way of a gallery of startling work, ending on a bunch of works that will function an introduction to the shorts inside every episode.

The episodes of “Evening Gallery” are a lot harder-hitting than “The Twilight Zone,” with a heavier emphasis on grotesque tales of horror and fewer of an emphasis on delicate social commentary. For entry factors, give “Make Me Chuckle” a attempt; it was written by Serling and directed by Steven Spielberg to appear like one lengthy take, with the episode following a comic who makes a Faustian cut price for only one extra giggle.

A curious and edgy cult object from the Sixties, “The Outer Limits” undoubtedly existed within the wake of “The Twilight Zone” whereas pushing these limits into darker territories.

Think about its introductory narration. Whereas Serling humanely welcomes us into “The Twilight Zone,” “The Outer Limits” topics us to a hostile takeover, with a voiceover saying, “There’s nothing incorrect together with your tv set. Don’t try to regulate the image. We’re controlling transmission.”

The episodes proceed alongside a extra brutal path. Whereas many of the “Outer Limits” episodes are firmly science-fiction tales (usually with straight-up B-movie area creatures, like in “The Zanti Misfits”), the tone is greater than keen to horrify its textually unwilling viewers. Including to this muscular impact was the gorgeously stylized pictures, with future Oscar winner Conrad Corridor (“Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Child”) growing the shadowy, cinematic model not usually seen on tv — not even in “The Twilight Zone.”

Created by Mark and Jay Duplass, actors and filmmakers identified for bridging the hole between indie and studio manufacturing modes and sensibilities, “Room 104” aired for 4 seasons on HBO and gave its motley crew of writers and administrators ample room to play with concepts and tones — as long as every episode came about within the titular motel room.

As such, there are every kind of peaks and valleys to discover inside the collection’ run, which is much less a couple of single creator’s concepts of exploring humanity and extra in regards to the managed chaos of throwing a bunch of artists on the wall and seeing what sticks. It is an fascinating option to method the time-honored anthology collection, and it makes for compelling viewing.

For an entry episode, attempt Season 4’s “The Assassin,” which stars Mark Duplass as a troubled musician performing some songs for followers in a non-public motel room model of a live performance earlier than issues devolve into darkish and troubled corridors.

If Serling is probably the most well-known TV anthology presenter, the Cryptkeeper is a detailed second. This ghoulish, skeletal puppet (voiced by John Kassir) sums up the tone and enchantment of “Tales from the Crypt” effectively. There will likely be macabre horror tales aplenty, with fiendish invention and ironic twists of merciless destiny. However, as evidenced by the Cryptkeeper’s regular clip of Borscht Belt one-liners, none of it is going to be taken too significantly.

As such, “Tales from the Crypt,” based mostly on the comedian collection of the identical identify by influential writer EC Comics, usually performs like a very prurient set of horror-comedies. You are not going to get the extent of exacting psychological examinations you may from a “Twilight Zone.” However you are in all probability going to have much more enjoyable.

To start out, give “And All By means of the Home” a attempt. Directed by Robert Zemeckis (yeah, the man who directed “Forrest Gump”), the episode follows a blistering femme fatale being hunted down by a psychopathic assassin dressed as Santa Claus. It simply may change into a vacation custom.

Created by horror icon George A. Romero (“Evening of the Dwelling Lifeless”), “Tales from the Darkside” aired in syndication from 1983 to 1988. A few of its ’80s attraction may strike the trendy viewer as tacky, particularly its introduction sequence, which turns footage of a stunning piece of surroundings right into a garish detrimental picture, the voiceover intoning that “there may be, unseen by most, an underworld, a spot that’s simply as actual, however not as brightly lit. A darkside.”

For this author, this cheese and cheek is a characteristic, not a bug, of the collection. Whereas it would not get as wacky as “Tales from the Crypt,” “Darkside” has a mordant humorousness all through its episodes, giving its typically emotionally pulverizing filmmakers room to play with some totally different tonal energies.

When you’re curious, take a look at Season 2’s “The Satan’s Advocate,” written by Romero himself — an episode that will remind some cinephiles of “Discuss Radio” and “Late Evening with the Satan.” It stars Jerry Stiller as a merciless however in style late-night radio present host whose selfishness is pushed to the restrict when he is available in contact with the precise satan.

Enjoying a bit of like an American model of “Inside No. 9,” “Tim & Eric’s Bedtime Tales” is an underrated Grownup Swim horror-comedy anthology collection from comedy madmen Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim.

The comedian duo, identified for shaping fashionable American alt-comedy sensibilities with reveals like “Tim and Eric Superior Present, Nice Job!,” has all the time walked proper as much as the road of comedy and horror, their greatest laughs coming as a consequence of cringe-inducing, uncanny surrealism. With their “Bedtime Tales,” they cross that tonal line after which some.

Heidecker and Wareheim wrote, directed, and starred in nearly each episode of the two-season collection, usually casting lots of their well-known pals (John C. Reilly, Zach Galifianakis, and Ray Smart, simply to call a couple of) instantly within the nightmarish storm of their idiosyncratic visions. For an fascinating double characteristic with the primary episode of “Black Mirror,” take a look at “The Endorsement,” which makes Jason Schwartzman comply with a curious endorsement cope with devastating penalties.

Sure, there may be an overarching, serialized plot and mythology to “The X-Information.” However on this author’s opinion, its finest episodes are its self-contained “monster-of-the-week” episodes, which basically throw FBI brokers Mulder and Scully (David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson) into the center of a “Twilight Zone” episode and make them clear up it.

These episodes make “The X-Information” really feel like an anthology collection, its style trappings elevating that different acquainted TV type — the police procedural — into the realm of allegory, terror, and experimentation that solely style anthology reveals like “The Twilight Zone” can contact.

There’s a wide range of tones and adventures to dive into all through this collection’ run. For a metatextual, “Rashomon”-esque piece of darkly humorous trickery, attempt “Jose Chung’s From Outer Area.” For an episode purposefully attempting to evoke that old-school “Twilight Zone” feeling, right down to black-and-white pictures, attempt “The Put up-Fashionable Prometheus.” And if you need pure, unadulterated, upsetting terror, there is no place like “House.”