Netflix’s 100% RT Supernatural Series Remains One of Its Scariest Shows Ever Made

Published Oct 17, 2026, 5:24 PM EDT

Rotten Tomatoes | Letterboxd | Metacritic

Carolyn Jenkins is a voracious consumer of film and television. She graduated from Long Island University with an MFA in Screenwriting and Producing where she learned the art of character, plot, and structure. The best teacher is absorbing media and she spends her time reading about different worlds from teen angst to the universe of Stephen King.

Sign in to your Collider account

Netflix has become a graveyard for hidden gems, which is perfect for spooky season. While the reputation for uncalled-for cancellations has overshadowed the platform's greatest hits, there are still some shows worth revisiting. One of these is the 100% Rotten Tomatoes-rated horror series that may have slipped by unnoticed. Marianne is the type of story created to chill the bones in a genuinely terrifying tale.

The eight-episode fear fest follows a disillusioned horror author, Emma (Victoire Du Bois), who has grown tired of the series of books that made her famous. Just as she is prepared to leave it all behind, the real world comes knocking. An old friend from her youth arrives, claiming that her mother has become possessed by the witch in Emma’s books. After killing herself in front of the writer, Emma endeavors to find out what is going on by traveling to her hometown where Marianne began. There, she discovers that Marianne isn’t a character in her book, but a real entity that has been feeding off of the attention of her namesake. This is just the start of the scariest show on Netflix that no one was watching.

‘Marianne’ Is Another Terrifying Take on ‘The Witch’

Recent incarnations of horror have rejected the benevolent witches of Charmed and The Vampire Diaries, instead leaning into something intrinsically evil. Robert Eggers’ The Witch delves deep into Puritanical lore of New England, where witches are instruments of the Devil. The 2019 show, Marianne, picks up where the movie left off with this terrifying perspective.

The essential horror series develops its own fascinating lore with the titular character. The wife of a demon, Marianne is an insidious witch who has the ability to possess others. As much evil as she spreads, the only thing she can’t do is lie about her name. She may be able to change the subject or distract from it, but she cannot outwardly lie when someone asks her what her name is. This is the source of her power, which is why Emma writing about her was so dangerous.

Emma was giving the name power, believing that she had come up with the idea in a dream. In reality, Marianne is from her haunted hometown and is weaponizing the notoriety from her books. This is the terrifying setup that is more than its concept. Marianne builds off this mythology to deliver one of the scariest shows on Netflix.

The shining star of the series is Mrs. Daugeron, the mother of Emma’s childhood friend, who becomes Marianne’s host. The older woman’s performance cements the show’s status as a must-watch horror series. She is a true horror villain who uses her age as a smokescreen. Daugeron’s unsettling body movements and horrifying performance demonstrate why Marianne is such a terrifying figure. She taunts Emma with what she knows, holding the old woman hostage while sowing horror among the townspeople.

The high production value of the series harkens back to other international Netflix dramas such as Dark, which understands how to tell a compelling story. Marianne was more than deserving of the horror community’s attention, and it was tragic that it couldn’t fulfill that potential.