Some are scary, some are more hilarious than spooky, but all of these shows have one thing common: they're based on a film that audiences just couldn't get enough of!
In honor of the TV show What We Do In the Shadows (based on the cult-favorite film) debuting on FX on March 27, it's the perfect time to celebrate 14 other horror/supernatural TV shows that are based on movies.
Here are all the most-watched TV series based on horror and supernatural movies. Did your favorite make the list?
14. Damien
The classic horror film The Omen got a fresh re-imagining with this contemporary take on the life of Damien Thorn, the mysterious child from the 1976 motion picture. Although he's now a romantic, complex protagonist, Thorn grew up seemingly unaware of the evil forces around him. The past catches up with Damien, forcing him to face his true identity -- that of the Antichrist, the most feared man throughout the ages.
13. The Purge
During a 12-hour period when all crime -- including murder -- is legal, a group of seemingly unrelated characters cross paths in a city in an altered America. While the clock winds down, some will fight, some will hide, others will embrace what it means to purge to its fullest extent -- whether for revenge, personal gain, protection, or unadulterated glee. As each character is forced to reckon with his or her past and plot how to better their futures, they soon discover how far they will go on Purge Night. This is pretty much a straight adaptation of the movie franchise, just stretched over a longer period of time.
12. Castle Rock
Okay, this one's kind of a stretch, but it's kind of based on The Shawshank Redemption so we're counting it, don't @ us. The entire Stephen King multiverse is the setting for this psychological horror series that takes place in Castle Rock, Maine, which is a location familiar to fans of King's work. The Hulu series explores themes and worlds that unite King's canon, including the infamous Shawshank Prison and IT.
Bank robber Seth Gecko and his violent brother, Richie, are on the run -- a robbery gone bad left several people dead -- and the FBI and Texas Rangers are in pursuit. As they head for Mexico, the brothers meet the Fuller family heading the same way. They take the family hostage and continue the trip in the Fullers' RV. Chaos breaks out when they stop at a bar to meet the cartel king who offered them shelter. The bar is home to vampires and becomes the scene of another fight in a reimagining of a 1996 movie by the same title, created by Robert Rodriguez, who brought that version to the big screen. This time it's for his channel, El Rey.
10. The Exorcist
Angela Rance believes something is very wrong in her home. Plagued by increasingly frightening nightmares, she isn't the only one in her family suffering: her husband Henry is slowly losing his mind, while their older daughter spends all of her time locked in her room and the younger one believes she hears strange noises coming from inside the walls. Desperate, she turns to Father Tomas Ortega -- the progressive leader of their suburban Chicago parish -- setting him on a collision course with old school Vatican soldier Father Marcus Brennan, as all their fates become entangled in a battle against an ancient force of evil. This is a new story told as a TV show based on the original film.
Ash is back! Bruce Campbell reprises his Evil Dead film role as heroic, chainsaw-handed monster fighter Ash Williams, now an aging lothario who has successfully avoided responsibility, maturity and heinous villains for the past 30 years. Constantly peering over his shoulder, Ash somehow knew that the Evil Dead would return for him. That day arrives on this Starz series when Ash commits an act of carelessness, unleashing a Deadite plague that threatens to destroy mankind.
8. The Mist
Another Stephen King story to get the TV show treatment is his 1980 novella The Mist, which was previously adapted into a feature film by Frank Darabont in 2007. This time, it's re-imagined for TV by executive producer/writer Christian Torpe. Set in the small town of Bridgeville, Maine, the story centers on a family torn apart by a heinous crime. In the aftermath, they are suddenly cut off from the rest of the world when an eerie, foreboding vapor unleashes predatory creatures onto the streets. Family, friends, and adversaries become strange bedfellows, battling the mysterious mist and its threats, as the rules of society break down.
7. Van Helsing
In this reimagining of the classic Dracula story (and original movie), the world is dominated by vampires, requiring humans to work together to survive. The series centers on Vanessa Helsing, daughter of famed vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing, who wakes up after a five-year coma to discover a vampire-controlled world. She soon learns that she possesses a unique blood composition that makes her immune to vampires and able to turn the creatures into humans. That power puts humanity's last hope to return the world to how it once was before the vampires took over in Vanessa's hands.
This modern reimagining of the Shirley Jackson novel and subsequent movie follows siblings who, as children, grew up in what would go on to become the most famous haunted house in the country.. Now adults, they are forced back together in the face of tragedy and must finally confront the ghosts of their past. Some of those ghosts still lurk in their minds, while others may actually be stalking the shadows of Hill House.
This MTV adaptation of the hit horror film franchise is now an anthology series. Instigated by a cyberbullying incident that goes viral, a brutal murder in Lakewood stirs memories of a crime spree from the town's past that has haunted some, intrigued others and maybe just spawned a new executioner. At the center of the story is a group of teenagers -- with two old friends struggling to reconnect at its heart -- who become lovers, enemies, suspects, targets and victims of a killer who's out for blood.
4. Hannibal
Gifted criminal profiler Will Graham has a unique way of thinking that allows him to empathize with anyone, including psychopaths. But while helping the FBI pursue a particularly complicated serial killer, he decides he could use some help and enlists the brilliant psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter -- yes, the one you know from the cult classic movies. The two form a partnership and it seems that there is no villain they can't catch together, but Lecter harbors a dark secret. His own brilliant mind has gone to the dark side and he has more in common with the criminals they hunt than Will could possibly imagine.
3. Bates Motel
This drama series was inspired by the seminal 1960 horror film Psycho and explores the formative years of Norman Bates and how his complicated bond with his mother forged a serial killer.
Based on the film of the same title, Sarah Michelle Gellar was the new Buffy Summers, a Slayer, one in a long line of young women chosen for a specific mission: to seek out and destroy vampires, demons and other forces of darkness. Unlike her predecessors, Buffy establishes a group of supportive friends who aids her in her battles with evil, including Willow, Xander and Cordelia. Her battles with evil are frequent, since Sunnydale, where Buffy and friends live, sits atop a gateway to the realm of the demons.
1. Teen Wolf
But the No. 1 supernatural/horror TV show based on a movie is none other than MTV's wildly successful and addictive Teen Wolf adaptation about high-school anonymity Scott McCall, a teen trying to break free from couldn't have happened in a more mysterious, complicated way. While walking in the woods one night Scott encounters a creature, is bitten in the side, and his life is forever changed. Is he a human or a werewolf? Or a little bit of both? Controlling the strange urges he now feels is the toughest part, and he's afraid the urges could end up controlling him. Will the bite be a gift or a curse, especially as it relates to the mischievous Allison, whom Scott can't get enough of?
