My_Mad_Fat_Diary_titleMy Mad Fat Diary (January 2013–present, E4)
If there’s one thing Rookies understand, it’s the need to confide your deepest, darkest, silliest, most shameful secrets in a diary. In the British comedy series My Mad Fat Diary, Rae Earl, recently released from a psychiatric facility, takes comfort in pouring out her heart in her own private journal when she rejoins the world and has to deal with her mother, her seemingly perfect childhood best friend, and a suite of dreamy boys. Rae has a really complicated relationship with Chloe, her lifelong friend, who alternates between encouraging Rae to join Chloe’s new group of buddies and going out of her way to make sure Rae doesn’t get too close. Rae also has to cope with her feelings of guilt over her friend Tix, who is still struggling with anorexia inside the hospital. My Mad Fat Diary is great—not only does it give us a fat female protagonist I would have related to as a teenager (and still kind of do), but it also allows Rae a sexuality, a courtesy that fictional fat people rarely get. When she’s writing in her diary, Rae obsesses over boys and details what she likes about them, what they make her feel, and what she wants to do with them. She has fleeting crushes on many if not most of the boys she meets and pines over Finn, a moody dreamboat who’s into Morrissey—be still, my heart and loins—and when he invites Rae over to listen to records in his room, it’s hard not to have flashbacks to every single time your stomach flipped while talking to a crush. —Brodie

MV5BNjUyOTEzMzI5MV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNTY0MzQyMQ@@._V1._SX325_SY475_Beloved (1998)
When I was a freshman in college, my boyfriend took me to see Beloved on a chilly Halloween night in Washington, DC. I’d read Toni Morrison’s book in high school, so I knew I was in for a fright, but I didn’t realize that its painful themes of slavery, sexual assault, and betrayal would cut even deeper when brought to life on the big screen. Like the novel, the movie focuses on the life of Sethe, a former slave (played by Oprah Winfrey) living in rural Ohio in the Civil War’s aftermath. A wrathful ghost who turns out to be Sethe’s reincarnated daughter frightens Sethe’s family and causes all hell to break loose. My heart remained heavy throughout the film as the title character (played by Thandie Newton, whose name coincidentally means “beloved” in Zulu and Xhosa!) wreaked havoc as a forlorn orphaned poltergeist in human form. I slept with the lights on for several nights after seeing this film, my mind filled with thoughts about the painful historic ghosts of slavery and genocide still swirling around me. This scary film will freak you out for days. —Jamia

Blair_Witch_ProjectThe Blair Witch Project (1999)
Before one million Paranormal Activity movies came out, there was The Blair Witch Project, a mockumentary about three student filmmakers who set out to make a movie about the witch that is said to haunt the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland. If you know nothing about this movie and might watch it, stop reading this paragraph right now! The thing you might know, and that most people in 1999 knew by the time the movie hit theaters, is that it was not actually made from culled-together found footage, as you’re told at the beginning of the film, but it is no less terrifying just because it’s fake. The students head into the woods full of skepticism, but they grow more and more wary as the days pass and weird shit keeps happening: noises, things that mess with their perception, and members of the group disappearing. It’s all shaky camera footage and first-person points of view, so it’s super easy to get lost in the story and forget that it’s all fiction. There’s no gore or monsters or ghosts—just the unknown, which is even scarier because the fear is totally psychological. I have never been into scary movies, but Blair Witch is different, because it leaves all the scary parts to your imagination, and what’s scarier than that? —Laia

The Addams FamilyThe Addams Family (1991)
I always wished I was part of the Addams Family. My family is weird, but The Addams Family was my kind of weird—there’s a goth mom, a funny dad, a crazy uncle, a sweet witch of an aunt, an annoying, creepy little brother, and CHRISTINA RICCI, forever the spookiest sister. Even though the outside world thought they were freaks, the Addams family had a bond that I always envied. For sure the best creepy family out there. —Dana

CANP_1210059_REVENANTS_COUTEAU_SS_DATE_Abribus.indd_NjpgLes Revenants (2012, UK Channel 4)
The first season of Les Revenants (The Returned) has just finished on British TV, and I’m counting down the days until the next one. The plot is simple: Various dead people come back as zombies in a little French village. But this isn’t the usual, gory kind of zombie fare that I hate. These are just normal people of different ages trying to fit back into a place where everyone thought they were dead—and they are. (As you might expect, people’s reactions to their returns are mixed.) What I love about this show is that you’re never sure what’s going to happen next. It is so haunting—but not in a spooky way—and it really gets you thinking. There’s also a really gripping soundtrack done by the Scottish band Mogwai, which you should totally get even if you don’t watch the show—it’s dark, atmospheric, and very haunting. —Caitlin

-homeland-season-1-dvd-B212P_SP761_30_27YVLHomeland (2011–present, Showtime)
Be warned, Homeland novices: I’m gonna spoil a few things for you here if you’re not up to date! Starting…now. Homeland is a show about terrorism that also deals with how our pasts can come back to haunt us. If you ask me (and I always assume people do), Carrie Mathison is one of TV’s greatest female characters, and Claire Danes plays her as someone who is damaged and talented and sick and lively and incredible at her job, but also kind of a huge failure. Homeland exists in this gray space between the real world and a fictional reality. Carrie is haunted by guilt over something that can’t be repaired and hides her lifelong battle with bipolar disorder from her employers, the CIA (kind of a huge deal). She starts the series on the trail of Sergeant Nicholas Brody, a returned prisoner of war, who she believes is working with Al Qaeda on a plan to attack the United States. Brody is also dealing with some pretty heavy shit, including returning to his family after eight years away, manscaping, the death of a child he grew close to while in captivity and, oh yeah, being held captive for almost a decade! When Claire and Brody are together, I get so tense I tend to eat my feelings and sleep fitfully for days. —Brodie

Sabrina, the Teenage Witch season 1Sabrina the Teenage Witch (1996–2000, ABC; 2000–2003, the WB)
Sabrina, the Teenage Witch is one of my favorite TV series ever! When Sabrina, who lives with her two witch aunts and a black cat named Salem, turns 16, she discovers that she is a witch, too. She had to learn to use her powers wisely and ethically, like all teenage girls do, and her problems were similarly universal: a first pimple, talking to her crush, and dealing with a high school Mean Girl. Even though she had magical powers, she always seemed to solve her problems the way every teenage girl does: by facing her fears and working through them using nothing more than her inner strength. —Dana

crucibleThe Crucible (1996)
This movie, adapted from the 1953 play by Arthur Miller, is about the Salem witch trials, its main goal is really to deliver a long moral message about the dangers of slut-shaming. A pastor catches a group of innocent pilgrim girls crucifying a chicken while they say the names of the guys they have crushes on, and then all hell breaks loose. In order to protect their secrets—which range from “I like a boy” to “I’m an adulterer who drank blood in a ritual with the hopes of killing my crush’s wife”—a few of them go catatonic, and the rest start lying and accusing people in the village of witchcraft. No one is immune—old men, all the women, and various slaves are gathered up, tried, and hanged as the village suffers a sort of mass hysteria. The cast is stunning: Winona Ryder plays the girl gang’s ringleader, Abigail Williams, who starts all of this so she can keep banging John Proctor, played by Daniel Day-Lewis. Since Day-Lewis is a method actor, I got a kick out of imagining him doing some deep scything and living in a pilgrim-y shack as he prepared for the role. Miller originally wrote the play to challenge McCarthyism, but the message applies today: Stop telling teenage girls they can’t be sexual, or they might rally together and make the adults start murdering one another in the name of the lord. —Danielle ♦