The Shudder series CREEPSHOW pulls together an anthology of horror tales. I’m caught up to the first four episodes (eight stories), and while overall it’s not as strong as I was hoping, it has some real gems, and I was happy to see the series creators pull stories from some of today’s greatest horror fiction authors.

For me, the challenge of this type of series is whether to follow the dark gotcha formula of the original comics, or use the dark justice themes and medium to create something fresh. The majority of the stories go the former route, creating spot-on CREEPSHOW stories that would have been brilliant in the original comics but in some cases felt a bit shallow and fell flat for me as a viewer of today.

For me, two of the stories really stand out. The first is THE MAN IN THE SUITCASE, in which a college student with low ambition winds up taking a suitcase home from the airport with a brutally contorted man stuffed inside. The thing is, if the man feels pain, he spits out golden coins, creating a moral choice: help the man, or milk him to get rich? The simple moral choice in the story skims both horror and dark humor, with a classic horror justice-style ending.

The absolute best story in the anthology so far for me, however, has to be Josh Malerman’s THE HOUSE OF THE HEAD. While the ending didn’t quite pay off for me, the story itself and how it’s told is extremely tense, weird, and creepy. In this story, a girl with an amazing dollhouse discovers a strange little severed head in the living room. The family of dolls in the house appear to react to the strangeness with dread and steadily mounting horror. The girl buys more dolls to try to help the doll family, but things just get worse. I found this story to be extremely titillating and clever while showing a fresh horror sensibility. I’d love to see more like it!

Looking forward to Thursday, when the next episode airs, with stories by Joe Hill and John Esposito. And especially looking forward to John Skipp’s story in the final episode.

MARIANNE, a French horror web TV series now airing on Netflix, is one of the best horror stories I’ve ever seen on a screen, pushing every element of visual storytelling and every advantage of the medium to the max to deliver a superb horror experience that never feels cheap or unearned.

The story introduces us to Emma, a brusque and selfish literary star promoting the final book in her Lizzi Larck series about a girl entangled with an ancient witch. A childhood friend visits her and tells her that her mother is possessed by the very witch she’s been writing about. This leads Emma to return to Elden, her hometown, and a duel with a very real Marianne. Did her writing produce Marianne, or did Marianne influence Emma to write about her?

Along the way, we meet her long-suffering assistant, childhood friends, and estranged parents, along with a quirky police inspector and an irascible priest. Through Emma’s interactions with these people, we learn the source of her past trauma and pain that led to her becoming who and what she is. She gains support from them in her fight with the witch, though they’re weakly matched for what they’re up against, as is she for the most part.

While some lighter moments and mild touches of humor are seeded into the fast-paced narrative, the horror rarely flags, and it’s almost always effective. Not a single punch is pulled. Very clever camera work, effects, and spooky situations provide genuine scares without cheap jump scares and other tricks. The acting, particularly among those influenced by Marianne, is terrific. An enormous care and not a little artistry went into every scene to create just the right effect here, the right transition there, the right pacing, atmosphere, and level of tension.

Overall, I liked it far better than most American horror shows. While the ending suggests a second season is in the offing, I don’t think the show needs it. It’s excellent just as it is, and I ended the first season completely satisfied with the story.

In the second season of MINDHUNTER, FBI agents Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff) and Bill Tench (Holt McCallany), along with psychologist Wendy Carr (Anna Torv), interview another round of notorious serial killers before putting their theories to an extreme test in the Atlanta Child Murders case. It’s not as interestingly wonky about psychology as the first season, and there are fewer riveting serial killer interviews, but overall I thought it was gripping, realistic, and excellent.

In this season, Bill and Wendy get as much if not more screen time than Holden, fleshing out the story and making it more about the unit than Holden’s journey. An interesting development is that the FBI is now completely supportive of the new Behavioral Sciences Unit, giving it resources, embracing its thinking, and expecting results. Holden and Bill revisit Ed Kemper (brilliantly portrayed by Cameron Britton) and interview Charles Manson (a fantastic scene) and David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam killer. During the Atlanta Child Murders, the agents are challenged by applying their theories in the real world, faced by accusations of prejudice (for profiling), local politics, bureaucratic incompetence and red tape, and a very savvy killer. Nothing is gained in this show without there being a personal or professional cost.

MINDHUNTER is great TV, and I’m excited about the third season, which I hope doesn’t take as long to air. It took an overworn trope–the FBI agent who puts himself in the mind of a serial killer–and completely reinvented it as something fresh and more than fresh, something real and believable. It also shows us once again how a smart show can be fantastic entertainment, following other great TV shows in raising the bar.

Season 3 of STRANGER THINGS (Netflix) flirts with jumping the ’80s nostalgia shark but doesn’t, focusing on great characters, great storytelling, and fresh themes to produce another winning season.

In Season 3, the kids are older and leaving childhood (and their dark past) behind, while the small town of Hawkins is undergoing its own change as the new Starcourt Mall ravages local businesses. Unfortunately, strange things are once again afoot, this time by the Soviets, who are trying to build their own dimensional gate. The rift has already allowed enough of the Mindflayer to get into our world to begin infecting local townspeople toward an apocalyptic end. Now it’s up to Hopper, Joyce, and the kids to band together to save the world once again.

This season was a real delight, as the show is evolving to revisit old themes while providing fresh material and character development. Everything about the show has great integrity to it, even the heavy ’80s references and nods to films like INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS and THE TERMINATOR. The kids are cute but this isn’t overplayed either, thank God. (It’s weird how well the Duffer brothers write kids, as in interviews with them and the child actors, they are super awkward around actual children.) The three main story lines are each enjoyable on their own and come together perfectly at the end in a show that is an example of textbook storytelling.

Then there’s Robin, played by the beautiful and hilarious Maya Hawke (Ethan Hawke’s daughter), who along with Steve Harrington (Joe Keery) steal the show as kids working an ice cream shop who crack an intercepted Russian code and discover the Soviet base. Their scenes were the best part for me.

Overall, two thumbs up for this season of STRANGER THINGS, and I’m looking forward to the big finale next year.