'Titanic' Meets 'The Twilight Zone' in Netflix's Near-Perfect 8-Part Sci-Fi Horror

Published Sep 24, 2026, 11:49 AM EDT

Kelcie Mattson is a Senior Features author at Collider. Based in the Midwest, she also contributes Lists, reviews, and television recaps. A lifelong fan of niche sci-fi, epic fantasy, Gothic horror, elaborate action, and witty detective fiction, becoming a pop culture devotee was inevitable once the Disney Renaissance, Turner Classic Movies, BBC period dramas, and her local library piqued her imagination.

Rarely seen without a book in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other, Kelcie explores media history (especially older, foreign, and independent films) as much as possible. In her spare time, she enjoys video games, amateur photography, geeking out over music, and attending fan conventions with her Trekkie family.

Apple TV has thoroughly earned its illustrious reputation as the home for sci-fi series that, in terms of quantity and consistent quality, one can’t find on other streamers. By and large, the platform’s flagship shows (Pluribus, Severance, Silo) and their hidden gems (Constellation) are unconventional, cerebral, daringly complex, and meticulously constructed. Although creative partners Jantje Friese and Baran bo Odar have worked with Netflix thus far in their joint career, the pair’s television projects deserve to be in the same conversation as their Apple TV counterparts — as visionary masterpieces simultaneously perfecting and reinventing the genre’s fundamentals.

In 2022, the unpredictably ingenious pair followed up Dark, their existential time travel thriller, with the formidable 1899. Equal parts period piece, sci-fi horror, and murder mystery, 1899 concerns itself with the convergence of hundreds of 20th-century strangers aboard a state-of-the-art steamship bound for New York. Friese and bo Odar’s second series is perhaps the first legitimate successor to Lost: a one-season wonder, it’s enthralling, sinister, marvelously perplexing, intricate enough to warrant viewers’ rapt attention, and — despite those superlative descriptions — halfway to indescribable.

Each passenger on the Kerberos is trying to escape the secrets, scandals, and traumas associated with their respective pasts. Their journey toward freedom barely begins before the Kerberos unexpectedly discovers its sister vessel, the Prometheus, which vanished during its Atlantic-crossing voyage. As soon as the ocean liners make contact, life aboard the Kerberos descends into a living nightmare.** Inexplicable deaths, unfathomable triangle symbols, and unreliable narrators plague the trapped passengers at every turn**, all while a looming observer orchestrates the horrors for reasons unknown.

1899 truly is a case where the less you know, the better your viewing experience will be. Indeed, Friese and bo Odar’s sophomore enterprise is an experience of the highest order, and a tremendous endeavor across every department. 1899 drips with striking efficiency and confidence, from the series’ exquisite visual identity (opulent sets, distinct costumes, one of the most cinematic and organic uses of the Volume to date) to the partners’ command over atmosphere. Claustrophobia and paranoia increase by strategically agonizing degrees until the dread feels unshakable, especially once 1899 evolves from its opening premise into something else entirely — many things, technically, given the genre-blending between historical fiction, supernatural mystery, hard sci-fi, and existential drama.

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