Five Netflix shows to watch if you loved ‘Balaraw: Blood Island’
Before the Halloween recommendations grow out of season, Netflix decided to fly subscribers into the land of the unknown with Balaraw: Blood Island. But of course, no return tickets cut yet.
The Filipino folk-horror series centres on a young woman’s desperate search for her missing mother, which leads her to a remote, uncharted, ominous location called Balaraw Island. But her mission soon turns into a relentless fight for survival as she ventures into a land of dark secrets where her identity hangs in the balance.
While the story blends Philippine myths, legends, and supernatural folklore, the series embraces an atmospheric horror layered with high-stakes survival elements and dark family secrets.
And if you want your post-viewing watchlist to reflect these tropes, here are five Netflix shows to stream after Balaraw: Blood Island.
Five Netflix shows to binge after Balaraw: Blood Island
The Silent Sea (Choi Hang-yong, 2021)
If Sabina’s fight for survival against extraordinary odds in an isolated, claustrophobic environment in Balaraw: Blood Island draws you in, The Silent Sea is the perfect follow-up to stream right now on Netflix. The sci-fi mystery is set in a near-future where water has nearly dried up on Earth, so much so that drinking water is a luxury sanctioned according to social class.
The crisis prompts a specialised organisation of space explorers to venture on a high-stakes, 24-hour mission to the abandoned Balhae Lunar Research Station on the moon, determined to retrieve research samples left behind after a devastating accident that killed all 117 researchers working there half a decade ago. The Silent Sea follows the crew on this perilous mission where dark secrets unravel rapidly.
The Forest (Julius Berg, 2017)
Those fancied by the missing-person trope and the subsequent search, resulting in Balaraw: Blood Island’s protagonist’s venture into an uncharted world of dark secrets, The Forest is probably just what you need next. The French mystery crime-drama unfolds in a small community in the Ardennes Forest, where the sudden disappearance of 16-year-old Jennifer Lenoir triggers a frantic search operation for local law enforcement.
As newly arrived police captain Gaspard Decker and local lieutenant Virginie Musso lead the search, the investigation takes a darker turn as more teenage girls go missing, including the latter’s daughter, Maya. The Forest follows the gripping investigation, joined by a local teacher and village outcast Eve, who was found wandering alone in the same forest years ago with no memory of what happened to her.
Playing Gracie Darling (Jonathan Brough, 2025)
Since a missing-person search operation sets the story in motion in Balaraw: Blood Island, Playing Gracie Darling is yet another gripping Netflix show to go all in on. The Australian drama centres on a past mystery that haunts the present. In 1997, 14-year-old Joni Gray holds a séance in a remote, abandoned cabin in the woods with her friends using a Ouija board in hopes of contacting a spirit called Levi. But that night, her friend Gracie went missing, and the event became a local cautionary legend.
27 years later, a group of local children turn the tragic turn of events into a sinister game called “Playing Gracie Darling,” oblivious to the horror that awaits. After participating in the game, Gracie’s niece, Frankie, goes missing under similar circumstances, prompting Joni, still haunted by Gracie’s vanishing, to return to her hometown and investigate the disappearances with police sergeant Jay.
The Girl in the Mirror (Sergio G Sanchez and Kike Maillo, 2022)
If you want your post-viewing recommendation to mirror Balaraw: Blood Island’s themes of identity crisis and dark, local folklore, The Girl in the Mirror means business. The Spanish supernatural thriller opens with Alma waking up in a hospital, severely wounded and suffering from total amnesia after surviving a catastrophic mountain bus crash that claims the lives of most of her classmates.
Unable to remember the crash or her past, Alma grows suspicious of even her parents and friends after returning home, fearing they might be lying or trying to shape her into something she wasn’t. The Girl in the Mirror follows Alma’s relentless pursuit of the truth as she tries to piece together who she really is while uncovering terrifying local myths, dark prophecies, suppressed memories, and cult-like rituals.
Dark (Baran bo Odar, 2017-2020)
Lastly, if you loved the thrill of tracking down missing persons tied to complex, shadowy family histories, Dark is the ultimate recommendation, famous for its slow-burning, atmospheric mystery-solving. The German sci-fi thriller kicks off with the disappearance of a local boy named Mikkel Nielsen in 2019, echoing a similar disappearance of a boy named Mads Nielsen 33 years earlier, in 1986, in the small town of Winden.
As the investigation intensifies, more children start disappearing near a cave, suggesting a generation-spanning criminal conspiracy that threatens the present and the future. Dark follows four interconnected families of Winden as they search for missing children, uncovering a complex web of sinister time travel that impacts human nature and life, anchored by a bootstrap paradox.