Apple TV has proven itself to be the go-to streaming service for science fiction, but it hasn’t quite topped Netflix when it comes to horror. Horror cinema is experiencing a renaissance right now thanks to the success of several independent productions, but it’s been a harder genre to crack on the small screen; sustaining a consistent level of suspense is much more challenging if there is an established premise for a series where the audience knows where the story will be going. Apple TV made the right decision to call up a horror master when the service debuted Servant, a supernatural horror show that was created and partially directed by M. Night Shyamalan. Although Shyamalan is a polarizing filmmaker who went through a period of unpopularity, he started a comeback in the mid-2010s by returning to his roots to make low-budget, high-concept horror films. Servant feels like it is cut from the same cloth, and it’s one of the few horror television shows that have taken advantage of the half-hour format.
‘Servant’ Is a Twisty Folk Horror Series
Servant is set in Philadelphia and follows the celebrity chef Sean Turner (Toby Kebbell) and his television news reporter wife Dorothy (Lauren Ambrose) after they tragically lose their son, Jericho, after only thirteen weeks. Although Dorothy’s alcoholic brother, Julian Pearce (Rupert Grint), stays with the couple to help them work through their grief, Sean hires the young nanny Leanne Grayson (Nell Tiger Free) to care for a lifelike doll made to resemble Jericho. Dorothy has been so consumed with sadness that she requires this unusual coping method to avoid having a breakdown. Servant twists its unusual premise into weirder directions as the series continues, as Jericho’s potential revitalization is linked to the presence of a godless cult and an ancient curse. Servant is among the best-crafted works of horror ever made during the streaming era. Stephen Kingsaid that the show was “extremely creepy and totally involving,” andGuillermo del Torocalled it “a beautifully crafted, elegant show” that was “surreal, iconoclastic and insidiously creepy in many small ways.”
Collider Exclusive · Horror Survival Quiz Which Horror Villain Do You Have the Best Chance of Surviving? Jason Voorhees · Michael Myers · Freddy Krueger · Pennywise · Chucky
Five killers. Five completely different ways to die — if you’re not smart enough, fast enough, or self-aware enough to avoid it. Only one of them is the villain your particular set of instincts gives you a fighting chance against. Eight questions will figure out which one.
🏕️Jason
🔪Michael
💤Freddy
🎈Pennywise
🪆Chucky
01
Something feels wrong. You can’t explain it — you just know. What do you do? First instincts are the difference between the survivor and the first act casualty.
02
Where are you most likely to find yourself when things go wrong? Setting is everything in horror. Where you are determines which rules apply.
03
What is your most reliable survival asset? Every survivor has a quality the villain didn’t account for. What’s yours?
04
What kind of fear is hardest for you to fight through? Knowing your weakness is the first step to not dying because of it.
05
You’re with a group when things start going wrong. What’s your role? Horror movies are brutally clear about who survives group situations and who doesn’t.
06
What’s the horror movie mistake you’re most likely to make? Honest self-assessment is a survival skill. Denial is not.
07
What’s your best weapon against something that can’t be stopped by conventional means? Every horror villain has a weakness. The survivors are always the ones who find it.
08
It’s the final scene. You’re the last one standing. How did you make it? The final survivor always has a reason. What’s yours?
Your Survival Odds Have Been Calculated Your Best Chance Is Against…
Your instincts, your strengths, and your particular way of thinking under pressure point to one villain you actually have a fighting chance against. Everyone else — good luck.
Camp Crystal Lake · Friday the 13th
Jason Voorhees
Jason is relentless, but he is also predictable — and that is the gap you would exploit.
He moves in straight lines toward his target. He doesn’t strategise, doesn’t adapt, doesn’t outsmart. He simply pursues.
Your ability to keep moving, use the environment, and resist the panic that freezes most victims gives you a genuine edge.
The Crystal Lake survivors were always the ones who stopped running in circles and started thinking about terrain, water, and distance.
You think like that. Which means Jason, for all his indestructibility, would face someone who simply refused to be where he expected.
Haddonfield, Illinois · Halloween
Michael Myers
Michael watches before he moves. He is patient, methodical, and almost impossible to detect — until it’s too late for anyone who isn’t paying close enough attention.
But you are paying attention. You notice the shape in the window, the car parked slightly wrong, the silence where there should be sound.
Michael’s power lies in the invisibility of ordinary suburbia — the fact that nothing ever looks wrong until it already is.
Your spatial awareness and instinct to map every room, every exit, and every shadow before you need them is precisely the quality Laurie Strode had.
You are not a victim waiting to happen. You are someone who already suspects something is wrong — and acts on it.
Elm Street · A Nightmare on Elm Street
Freddy Krueger
Freddy wins by getting inside your head — using your own fears, your own memories, your own subconscious as weapons against you. That strategy requires a target who can be destabilised.
You are harder to destabilise than most. You’ve faced uncomfortable truths about yourself and you haven’t looked away.
The survivors on Elm Street were always the ones who understood what was happening and chose to face it rather than flee from it.
Freddy’s greatest weakness is that his power evaporates in the presence of someone who refuses to give him the fear he feeds on.
Your psychological resilience — the ability to stay grounded when reality itself becomes unreliable — is exactly the quality that keeps you alive here.
Derry, Maine · It
Pennywise
Pennywise is ancient, shapeshifting, and feeds on terror — but it has one critical vulnerability: it cannot function against someone who genuinely stops being afraid of it.
The Losers Club didn’t survive because they were braver than everyone else. They survived because they faced their fears together, and faced them honestly.
You ask the questions others avoid. You look directly at what frightens you rather than turning away.
That directness — the refusal to let fear fester in the dark — is Pennywise’s worst nightmare.
It chose the wrong target when it chose you. You are exactly the kind of person whose fear tastes like nothing at all.
Chicago · Child’s Play
Chucky
Chucky’s greatest advantage is that nobody takes him seriously until it’s already too late. He exploits the gap between how something looks and what it actually is.
You don’t have that gap. You take threats seriously regardless of how they present — and you never make the mistake of underestimating something because of its size or appearance.
Chucky relies on surprise, on the delay between recognition and response. You close that delay faster than almost anyone.
Your instinct to treat every unfamiliar thing with appropriate scepticism — rather than dismissing it because it seems absurd — is the exact quality that keeps you breathing.
Against Chucky, not laughing is already winning. You are very good at not laughing.
As is the case with many of Shyamalan’s films, Servant understands the importance of creating a compelling version of reality that allows the audience to buy into the character drama before they begin accepting the folk horror elements. Even when removed from the cults and witchcraft, Servant sets up a compelling dynamic between its characters; Dorothy has had the confidence she needs for her job shattered, Sean doesn’t know how much he should indulge his wife’s unusual healing techniques, Julian wants to help without bringing up his own issues, and Leanne has been inserted into a caustic family dynamic that she does show some interested in aiding. Even though there’s a lot of horror projects that boil down to being about grief, Servant has an interesting approach because it shows how tragedies can linger days, weeks, and years after their initial occurrence.
There are plenty of other ghosts outside the walls of Hill House.
While it contains some truly haunting imagery, Servant is also a very dark comedy that benefits from the fact that all of the characters are inherently selfish and end up facing consequences for their actions. There’s a point within every horror project when watching innocent people get terrorized can become uncomfortable, but it’s less of an issue in Servant because the characters are often to blame for their own misfortunes. Shyamalan has always had a talent for exploring familial intrigue, and Servant is a surprisingly honest exploration of the different roles that relatives play in each other’s lives when they grow older. It’s also a series that constantly shifts the power dynamic so that no character has too much control or self-awareness; even if the Turners have the benefit of wealth and Julian has the freedom of not being directly involved in the employment arrangement, Leanne still has possession of the concept of Jericho’s soul, which allows her to retain her influence.
‘Servant’ Always Reinvents Itself
Although the premise for Servant could have easily begun to fall apart after only a short period of time, the show continues to complicate its mythology in later seasons and further suggests that Dorothy has distanced herself from ever being the same person that she was prior to Jericho’s death. The fact that episodes are around 30 minutes in length is critical to the pacing, as it’s guaranteed that every single installment will include a few great scares with not a lot of filler. The fact that the Turners are trying to maintain some semblance of the status quo also gives Servant more believability, as it does not have to keep justifying why this event wouldn’t spark any outside interest.
Servant is one of the most underrated shows of the past decade because it aired before Apple TV had gained a reputation for being a prestige service, as most of its hits at the time were those that had famous names attached. That Shyamalan’s work has been reassessed after making three hit films since Servant’s debut also changes its standing, as more fans might be willing to watch the series in light of its creator’s consistency. Servant is a total blast that shows more interest in amping up its scares than stringing along its audience with a series of mystery boxes, and it has continued to age well as an underrated gem within Apple TV’s growing library of high-quality genre content. And with King and del Toro recommending the series, can you really go wrong as a horror lover?
