With deliberate pacing, compelling storytelling and genuine scares, Archive 81 may just be the best new series of the year.

Produced by A-list horror director James Wan, Archive 81 released its full first season on Netflix last week, and tells the story of tape footage conservator Dan Turner (Mamoudou Athie, The Get Down), hired by Virgil Davenport (Martin Donovan, Big Little Lies), representing a mysterious corporation, to restore a series of burned videotapes recovered from the charred remains of the mysterious Visser apartment building.

Alone in a remote archive without even cell-phone service, he meticulously restores and watches the tapes made by Melody Pendras (Dina Shihabi, Altered Carbon) who is staying in the Visser, interviewing tenants in search of her missing mother in 1994. As Melody dives deeper into the mysterious and dangerous truths of the Visser and its residents, Dan discovers how closely linked the footage is to his own past.

The ongoing Archive 81 podcast first began in 2016, and the show’s official site calls the series is a “found footage horror podcast about ritual, stories, and sound.” Netflix and Wan have kept the show’s framework is roughly the same as the podcast that inspired it: in the first episode, there is less focus on Dan’s personal life so that the viewer can get right into Melody’s tapes, but Dan’s tragic backstory is fleshed out steadily throughout the first few episodes.

The television show has Dan restoring film footage, while in the podcast Melody was only recording audio. (This obviously works better in a visual medium.) The show still retains several aspects of sound-based horror, with a spooky operatic aria recurring on both the podcast and the television series. But Wan and showrunner Rebecca Sonnenshine also make great use of the found-footage trope, exploring the textures of the fire-damaged, time-ravaged videotapes to hint a horror lurking within.

But there’s much more than 1990s technology that make the show compelling: Dan and Melody are connected both within and without the archived tapes, and that connection unites the two in a quest from their own respective timelines, one that may manifest in ways that bend space-time. Or perhaps Dan’s imagination is in overdrive, isolated in the Archive for months.

The show goes for atmospheric tension over jump scares, stoking an ever-growing feeling of dread and suspense. Melody enlists Jess (Ariana Neal, Hidden Figures) to help her get an introduction to the building’s residents, but Jess has her own trauma; she suffers from frightening seizures that have her deeply religious mother turning to a suspect priest for exorcisms. The building’s residents, led by the handsome yet suspect Samuel (Evan Jonigkeit, X-Men: Days of Future Past) regularly meet to chant, somewhat hypnotized, in front of a pagan god statue.

Meanwhile, back in the Archive, Dan’s restless explorations and attempts to contact the outside world are met with disapproval from Davenport, who has Dan and the entire Archive under surveillance. As Dan’s interest in the mystery deepens, he contacts his friend Mark (Matt McGorry, How to Get Away with Murder) to help him find out what happened to Melody and the other Visser residents. But it seems that the more Mark discovers, the less it all makes sense.

The show is extremely compelling, with a shocking finale that leaves room for a second season. (The podcast has multiple seasons but the story does not continue in a linear fashion.) The acting is stellar, and the story is gripping, always leaving the viewer wanting more.