If you’ve just finished watching Netflix’s Below and are still in the mood for small-town thrillers, this list has you covered. Below is the latest in the ever-popular small-town thriller genre. It’s a redundant genre name, actually. “Small-town” should be enough to tell you that this will be a story where things are not quite as they seem.
Sure, there’s the odd Gilmore Girls or Somebody, Somewhere, shows that mine their small-towns for comedy and love, but for the most part, a small-town is there to hide something that shouldn’t be there. It’s a place where everyone knows everyone’s business, and secrets and past wrongs bubble to the surface at the worst times.
Les Revenants (2012-2015)
The French supernatural thriller, Les Revenants (The Returned in English), is a two-season series based on the 2004 French film of the same name. In a small French mountain town, the town’s dead suddenly reappear alive and seemingly well. Recent bus crash victims, children who died decades ago, and even a serial killer all arise, unsure of how.
No one in town knows what is going on, but they try to make sense of the returned dead and fit them back into their lives as best they can. As strange phenomena start to affect the town, it becomes clear the mysteries will not stop anytime soon. Les Revenants was also adapted into an American series, which can be skipped.
Not the typical zombie show, Les Revenants is more interested in seeing what happens when people return from the dead rather than answering the question of why they’ve come back. It’s a chilling, intelligent series that masterfully brings together its many plotlines, keeping the central mystery in focus even while it explores side stories.
Dark (2017-2020)
The German science fiction series is the high watermark for time travel TV shows. It’s an atmospheric, complex, brilliant, and heartbreaking tale that feels like it can only end one way, until it ends the other. Set in the fictional town of Winden, Germany, four families experience generations of trauma, over and over.
The show never leaves the small town of Winden, just bringing us to the village at different times in history, and in each period, a common sentiment is voiced: a wish for a world without Winden. It’s a feeling that anyone who has grown up in a small town has felt, the wish that they were anywhere but their restrictive, boring home.
However, in Dark, and in life, people are more a part of their small town than they may care to admit, or may even know. Dark‘s journey through timelines presents an evolving, repeating, horrific vision, but the entire time, the strong storytelling keeps you on board and rewards you with an incredible finale.
Sharp Objects (2018)
Gillian Flynn’s debut novel Sharp Objects was turned into an HBO miniseries in 2018, and it’s one of the best miniseries on the streamer. Amy Adams stars as Camille Preaker, a reporter who has recently been discharged from a psychiatric hospital and goes to her hometown of Wind Gap, Missouri, to investigate the brutal murder of two young girls.
There, she confronts small-town politics that seem set on keeping her from figuring out the real story of what happened to the girls. Camille is also forced to confront her mother, Adora (Patricia Clarkson), whose hold over the town is as strong as her hold over Camille and Camille’s half-sister, Amma (Eliza Scanlen).
A highly disturbing tale, Sharp Objects, examines exactly how an idyllic-seeming town can hold dark secrets and histories, and Camille’s attempts to crack them open are harrowing and riveting. It’s a disturbing, gripping series, and features one of the most shocking final episodes of a miniseries ever.
Mare Of Easttown (2021)
Mare of Easttown is one of the best shows HBO has made in the last ten years, and that’s saying something. The series is set in the titular Easttown, a small town on the outskirts of Philadelphia. Few shows or movies have managed to capture the look and feel of those Pennsylvania Appalachian towns, which straddle the line between vacant and charming.
Kate Winslet stars as Mare Sheehan, a police detective and a former high school basketball star, which basically makes her the Prime Minister of the small town. Mare is reeling from a family tragedy from two years earlier and is also trying to solve the inexplicable murder of a teenage mother in the woods on the outskirts of town.
Mare of Easttown is a showcase of incredible acting, with special mention made to Julianne Nicholson, Jean Smart, and Evan Peters. For once, the small town in Mare of Easttown is not so sinister. It could be a place of safety and comfort if the people who lived there would only let it.
Midnight Mass (2021)
Mike Flanagan’s Midnight Mass captures the small-town atmosphere you find in many Stephen King stories. The miniseries is set on Crockett Island, a fictional fishing village off the coast of New England. An oil spill has led to the steady collapse of the town, and the emigration of most young people.
With little to cling to, the town snaps to attention when a young, charismatic new priest, Father Paul Hill (Hamish Linklater), arrives on the island. Father Paul brings with him seemingly supernatural powers, which he claims are granted by god. It soon becomes clear that the god he’s referring to is something much more vile.
Atmospheric and moody do not begin to describe Midnight Mass, which is populated by bedraggled and hopeless faces, all searching for a version of their hometown that no longer exists. It’s a frightening tale, with a lot to say about religion and community, but above all, it’s sad, a tragic vision of the deals we make when we’re terrified of the unknown.
Murder In A Small Town (2024-Present)
Murder in a Small Town is an ongoing Canadian thriller series that stars Rossif Sutherland as Karl Alberg, a detective from Minneapolis who is now working as the Chief of Police in Gibsons, British Columbia, a remote small town in the Pacific Northwest. There, he becomes romantically involved with local librarian Cassandra Lee (Kristin Kreuk).
Hoping for a quiet retirement after his messy divorce and the difficult policing of a major metropolis, Karl is frustrated to find himself in the middle of a major homicide investigation in Gibsons, and as the series goes on, more and more unexpected secrets rise to the surface in the town.
Murder in a Small Town perfectly captures the small-town feeling of just about everyone knowing what’s going on with everyone else. As an outsider, Karl knows less about this case than just about anyone. It’s a charming series that makes sure to balance the grim crimes with a lighter tone.
Widow’s Bay (2026-Present)
In Widow’s Bay, showrunner Katie Dippold combines the haunted secrets that come with a small town separated from society for centuries with the comedy inherent when a group of people spends a little too long in the same patch of land, never experiencing anything or anyone new.
Set in the fictional small island town of Widow’s Bay in New England, the series stars Matthew Rhys as Tom Loftis, the young mayor intent on making the town a tourist destination à la Martha’s Vineyard. There’s just one problem: the town is haunted, and a supernatural curse is about to descend on it just before the summer season.
Widow’s Bay strikes the perfect tone between absurdly funny and strikingly freaky. It weaves together a fascinating history, with unique stories and scares, and brings everything to a climax with its attention to character and understanding of how small towns, like the ones you find in Below, are just a few bad days from total chaos.
