M. Night Shyamalan’s wonderfully dark series Servant is the creepiest horror show on Apple TV. The engrossing show, about a supernatural nanny with designs on an upper-class Philadelphia power couple and their missing baby, shines thanks to an amazing array of directorial talent and some fantastic on-screen presences.
Here’s why you should watch all four seasons of this runaway freight train of a show.
Billy Crystal has enjoyed a long career in comedy as a standup and in film and TV roles, but that’s not all he does. The unnerving trailer Apple TV+ dropped Tuesday for his new series Before, billed as a psychological thriller and a “supernatural mystery,” pushes a truckload of horror tropes fit to run you down in the dark of night. You weren’t sleeping anyway.
And Crystal not only stars but also executive produces the creepy-looking limited series, set to premiere October 25 on Apple TV+.
Update: Billy Crystal’s psycho-thriller limited series Before started streaming Friday on Apple TV+, so have at it. Reviews so far seem mixed, by the way. Some call Crystal “convincingly somber” and “spooky.” Others call the series “the year’s most disappointing show” and a “stagnant, repetitive mess.” Wow, tell us how you really feel.
The story of “the most famous poltergeist haunting in history” came my way first in the form of a trailer Apple TV+ dropped Tuesday for The Enfield Poltergeist documentary series. I hadn’t heard of the case it covers.
The trailer delivers a chill or two, but it’s kind of over-the-top with the spooky narration. The four-part documentary series debuts October 27.
★★★★☆
Servant, the stellar Apple TV+ show about a supernatural nanny and the Philadelphia family that plays unwitting and unwilling host to her journey, comes to its fiery finale this week.
Leanne must decide who she’s going to serve, and Dorothy decides what her family and life will be from now on. The episode, entitled “Fallen,” serves up a mostly perfect ending to a mostly perfect show.
M. Night Shyamalan returns to the director’s chair for the penultimate episode of Apple TV+’s Servant, his show about a nanny terrorizing a Philadelphia family in their brownstone.
Leanne has Dorothy all to herself — and Dorothy can’t help but notice. A last-ditch rescue attempt is scuttled after Dorothy insists on hearing some hard truths from Sean and Julian, who may not have the upper hand when they’re done.
Though unnerving and quite upsetting, “Awake” stands tall as one of the greatest episodes yet of this outstanding show.
★★★★☆
Bad weather, bad omens and bad timing collide on this week’s installment of Apple TV+ thriller Servant.
Sean and Julian attempt a Hail Mary to wrest control of the Turner house away from evil nanny Leanne. And Dorothy’s about to realize there are worse things than being loved too much.
The episode, entitled “Tunnels,” is a sharply directed half-hour of the horror/mystery series, which is the best show on Apple TV+ — and indeed one of the finest things on TV, full stop. It points the way to darker things coming in Servant’s final two episodes.
Apple TV+ thriller Servant heads toward mutually assured destruction this week. Sean and Julian start believing in angels and demons. Dorothy chases down a lead. Leanne is becoming too powerful to even speak to. And a stranger from the past shows up to tell a story that the Turner family does — and does not — want to hear.
It’s a conflicting, confounding and con … ehh very good episode of the show created by M. Night Shyamalan and Tony Basgallop.
★★★★☆
Apple TV+’s Servant takes a trip to a backyard zoo this week. The show about the world’s scariest nanny and her burgeoning mystical powers finds the Turner family in the middle of a circus of violence, vomit and vengeance.
The cult members haven’t run out of ideas about ways to get Leanne back, even if Dorothy has. Plus, Sean and Julian have a brutal heart-to-heart. And Bev has a bone to pick with Leanne.
The episode, entitled “Zoo,” is another marvelously unhinged half-hour of television from the best crew in the biz.
★★★★☆
Sean and Dorothy throw a party this week on Servant, the Apple TV+ show about a nanny who is more than she seems and the family harboring her. Leanne is starting to notice that her adopted family isn’t being quite as familial and loving as she’d like. And she decides something must be done about it.
As the neighborhood gathers in the Turner household, Leanne plots her own pincer maneuver in a brilliantly directed installment of the best series on Apple TV+.
★★★★☆
Halloween comes early this week on Servant, the Apple TV+ saga of a family increasingly held prisoner by the mystic nanny who once threatened to save them from themselves.
On the prowl for zealots, Leanne discovers that the violence inside her can be used for more than necessary evil. Julian and Sean are starting to lose the illusion that they have any kind of control over her, and are beginning to agree with Dorothy that it’s time for the nanny to go. It’s another excellently creepy outing for the Turner family.
★★★★☆
We’re having a séance this week on Apple TV+ chiller Servant, the wonderfully cracked show about a magical nanny who uses murder and mayhem to maintain her grip on the Philadelphia family who summoned her.
Leanne hates the two new nurses Dorothy hired to look after her during her recovery, but she’s losing her favor with Sean and Julian by acting so suspicious. Sean desperately wants Dorothy to go back to her old self, and is realizing Leanne might be the problem.
It’s a tense and sharply directed episode of the best show on Apple TV+.
Dorothy is back in the bizarre Turner household this week on Apple TV+ thriller Servant — and she’s not happy to be home. Leanne insists on normalcy, but considering the things that have happened, that’s asking a lot.
To make matters worse, Tobe and Julian are stuck in the house together. Plus, the Turners have a big bug problem, Sean can’t stand up for either Leanne or Dorothy, and Dorothy keeps throwing a monkey wrench in Leanne’s plans.
★★★★☆
Servant, the most joyous and unhinged show on Apple TV+, returns for its fourth and final season this week. The saga of the Turner family and their live-in nanny can’t help but disappoint, just because it’s going away. Never mind whether it wraps up its plot threads or not.
A show unbound from ordinary televisual constraints, both dramatically and visually, Servant serves as a vivid representation of its creators’ raging id. As such, its first three seasons became one of the most wonderful pleasures on television. Let’s see how M. Night Shyamalan and Co. are set to send off this family of arch-weirdos.
Apple TV+ set a premiere date of April 29 and put out an initial trailer for the Apple Original horror-thriller series Shining Girls on Friday. And it’s seriously spooky. What with all the blurred reality and scary-shapeshifting-killer vibes, the trailer makes the show look both disturbing and disorienting.
The third season of Servant is now scheduled to premier on Apple TV+ in January. And the streaming service is so pleased with the horror (and sometimes darkly humorous) show it went ahead and committed to a fourth season.
A new trailer should whet fans appetites for the upcoming new season.
The selection of horror series on Apple TV+ is about to grow now that the streaming service picked up The Changeling. LaKeith Stanfield will star in the story of fatherhood, marriage, mythic monsters and racism.
The nonstop onslaught of coronavirus news is making me a little crazy. Headlines asides, COVID-19-related content even infects the stream of shows in my Podcasts app. To ease my coronapanic, lately I’ve been binging on something a lot more relaxing: vintage radio podcasts from Relic Radio.
Served up through a variety of free podcasts, these old-time radio dramas really help take my mind off the rapidly unfolding COVID-19 horror show.
Apple TV+ won’t be the only video streaming service that launches with a new Steven Spielberg show.
Quibi, an upcoming short-form video service, revealed today that Steven Spielberg is creating an all-new original horror show that comes with a weird catch: you can only watch it at night.
The Oscar-winning director behind Traffic and Ocean’s Eleven is coming back to the big screen in 2018. Only instead of filming his latest movie on Hollywood-quality rig, Steve Soderbergh is turning to Apple’s iPhone to capture all the action.
We all know that teens are crazy drivers. But when you put phones in their hands, things get really bad.
AAA conducted video analysis of teenagers on the road and discovered that “distraction was a factor in nearly six out of 10 moderate-to-severe teen crashes.”
The video footage speaks for itself, so just watch:
SAN FRANCISCO — When I went to meet Peter Dijkstra, the business guy at Dutch game developer Vogelsap, I had to wait in line to see the small, indie team’s new horror game, The Flock. I wasn’t too upset, though, as the guy in front of my was none other than famed Doom and Quake developer, John Romero.
Dijkstra’s The Flock is an upcoming horror multiplayer game that takes place in one of three different arenas. Playing the game with three other people Monday at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco brought back memories of those long-ago sessions of Quake Arena, as well as more modern examples of asymmetric multiplayer like Left 4 Dead and Evolve.
AMC’s mega-popular show The Walking Dead has returned for the second half of its fifth season, and if you are as excited about it as my Twitter feed is, you’re probably looking for something gory to hold you over between episodes.
But don’t worry — we have you covered. Here are some more undead-themed shows and movies that will satisfy your need for fake blood while you’re waiting to make sure Daryl Dixon’s zombie-proof vest made of “fan favorite” is still holding up.
It's that time of year again, when our thoughts start to turn to the macabre, we start planning costumes for all those end-of-month parties, and we re-watch all those great horror films from the past.
It's hit or miss, though, and even films that would seem to have a leg up in the quality department doe to the fact that they're based on successful novels don't always make the cut.
Here then, are five horror films based on literature that you should take time to see, and five more that you really ought to give a miss to.
Photo: New World Pictures
If you watch Netflix on your iOS device or game console, you know that the browsing function on those apps is a pain to use. And unless you know exactly what you’re looking for, it can be annoying to find something new.
So as a service, we’re going to recommend some things you can watch on Netflix right now. This time around, we have three fascinating documentaries about the horror genre. But even if you’re not a fan of scary monsters and super creeps, they still have plenty to offer.
Your Ouya just got a little creepier thanks to the developer of creepy platforming game, Whispering Willows. The trailer (below) shows protagonist Elena as she searches for her missing father through innovative environmental puzzles and supernatural obstacles.
“[Elena] must harness the powers of her heritage,” writes developer David Logan on the Kickstarter page, “utilizing astral projection and other ethereal abilities to find her father before he, too becomes lost to the hopeless morass of the Willows estate.”
If that (and the trailer below) doesn’t have you dusting off your tiny Android-powered gaming cube, we don’t know what will.