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Movies & Series 28 September 2019, 16:29

Dark Thillers and Horror – TV Series to Make You Feel Uncanny

Many of us like to be scared every now and then. Dark stories allow us to fulfill this desire relatively safely – and many streaming platforms' offerings will cater to those needs. Meet the most unsettling series.

Table of Contents

The X-Files

  1. Genre: Thriller / horror / mystery
  2. Streaming platform: Amazon Prime, Netflix, FOX

Finally, we revisit a series that had a tremendous impact on the shape of today's modern series. The X-Files changed TV shows, became an iconic legend, and the unforgettable opening credits still give you goosebumps. It's such an important gem that it will never get erased from a pop-culture.

Chris Carter's series began rather inconspicuously. Additionally, at the time of the pilot's release it had to rival the western competition. The adventures of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully have won and triggered the pop culture phenomenon of the 90s. Almost everyone watched The X-Files. An entire generation can remember being herded into beds by their parents, just to hear the ominous music a few minutes later – myself included. And yes, we have watched it anyway – to find out if the truth is out there. Hidden behind the couch. Looking for a safe spot behind the door. Watching reruns late at night, we wanted to believe.

Investigations and challenges of the FBI agents have been successful and won on many levels. Main characters were simply too cool to dislike them. What's more important, there was a lot of tension between lead protagonists played by David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson. Their struggle with an entire system which hid the truth about the presence of aliens on Earth was accompanied by an atmosphere of hostility and danger. If someone did not want to follow the mythological episodes focused on the main story, they could simply watch the extremely popular monster of the week episodes – where a unique story was told each time.

Among the latter, there were some real gems. Some of them covered the classic motifs of horror in a funny, postmodern way. Others were really scary. They offered various stories, unique threads and quite diverse atmosphere. UFO abductions, haunts, creatures from myths and urban legends, conspiracy theories, government manipulation.

We traveled through filthy city streets or factories, but also through American wilderness and claustrophobic towns, where everyone has something to hide. The screenwriters' room was filled with such talents as Vince Gilligan (Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul), and the series provided us with one of the most expressive villains known in television history – the Cigarette Smoking Man (William B. Davis).

For the first seven seasons it all worked like clockwork, even if the mythological episodes were sometimes looped or mutually exclusive. The next two series were different and the return of the franchise in the tenth and eleventh was not as good as expected. However, no one's going to take away those first achievements from Christ Carter and his magnificent team.

Hubert Sosnowski

Hubert Sosnowski

He joined GRYOnline.pl in 2017, as an author of texts about games and movies. He's currently the head of the film department and the Filmomaniak.pl website. Learned how to write articles while working for the Dzika Banda portal. His texts were published on kawerna.pl, film.onet.pl, zwierciadlo.pl, and in the Polish Playboy. Has published stories in the monthly Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror magazine, as well as in the first volume of the Antologii Wolsung. Lives for "middle cinema" and meaty entertainment, but he won't despise any experiment or Fast and Furious. In games, looks for a good story. Loves Baldur's Gate 2, but when he sees Unreal Tournament, Doom, or a good race game, the inner child wakes up. In love with sheds and thrash metal. Since 2012, has been playing and creating live action role-playing, both within the framework of the Bialystok Larp Club Zywia, and commercial ventures in the style of Witcher School.

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