All the latest new shows and movies coming to Amazon Prime Video UK | Stuff

An Amazon Prime membership’s benefits go way beyond giving you super-speedy deliveries for free – there’s also the fantastic Prime Video streaming service included, offering up loads of movies and TV shows for instant viewing.

Like Netflix, Amazon is constantly adding fresh eyeball fodder to its streaming library, so much so that it can be difficult to keep up with all the new stuff. So, as we do with Netflix each month, we’ve decided to dedicate a regularly-updated article to what’s new – as long as we deem it worth watching, of course.

Looking for the latest thing to stream? Read on, and allow us to guide you through all the best recent additions.

And why not check all these out with a free 30-day trial of Amazon Prime Video here.

Note: the newest stuff is at the top of the list, with material getting progressively older as you scroll down.

Daisy Jones & The Six (S1)

Inspired by the real-life shenanigans of Dreams-era Fleetwood Mac, this limited series (based on the bestselling novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid) recounts the rise and fall of a 1970s rock band, told as former members recount the truth about the group’s breakup for a documentary.

The series – an Amazon production – stars Riley Keough and Sam Claflin as the band’s feuding lead singers and features a ton of original 1970s-style tunes, and overall it’s plush, shiny and pristine – perhaps a little too much for its subject matter, which desperately wants to be edgy but never feels quite as convincingly dark as it should be.

Watch Daisy Jones & The Six on Prime Video

Sicario

Working both as an involving crime thriller and an unflinching examination of the failed US War on Drugs and its latent effects on the cartel-run Mexican border cities, Denis Villeneuve’s Sicario certainly isn’t for the faint-hearted or weak of stomach.

Taut and tense, the plot works chiefly due to leads Emily Blunt and Benicio del Toro, who sell their on-paper implausible characters – a naïve and principled FBI agent and a merciless assassin on the US payroll – through sheer force of performance. The film is joined on Prime by its inferior sequel Soldado.

Watch Sicario on Prime Video

Carnival Row (S2)

Arriving a full four years after the first season, this is the second (and final) serving of Amazon Studios’ steampunk-inspired fantasy series, in which Orlando Bloom and Cara Delevingne play star-crossed lovers who form an unlikely connection across the human-pixie divide.

Delevingne’s elfin looks mean she’s well cast as a member of the fae-folk, magical beings that live in thrall to tyrannical humans. With an uprising on the cards and a spate of strange killings raising tensions, Bloom and Delevingne will be forced to choose sides. There will be 10 episodes in all, with a new one arriving on Prime Video each week.

Watch Carnival Row on Prime Video

Pan’s Labyrinth

Like The Chronicles of Narnia written by Ernest Hemingway, 2006’s Pan’s Labyrinth is a fantasy film grounded very much in the grimness of reality. Set in the years following the brutal Spanish Civil War, the film centres on young Ofelia, who lives with her mother and Francoist, fascist stepfather but finds escape in a mysterious abandoned labyrinth populated by mythical creatures.

Guillermo del Toro’s visionary use of special effects and ability to both delight and horrify makes this movie an enduring classic, and arguably among the best films of the 21st century so far. Young adults will love it, yes, but its visual, auditory and thematic richness will resonate with viewers of any age.

Watch Pan’s Labyrinth on Prime Video

Goodfellas

Martin Scorsese’s mob tale is nothing short of a masterpiece. Intoxicating, entertaining and horrifying with an unforgettable period soundtrack and some of the cleverest editing you’ll ever see, Goodfellas is a film that feels as fresh in 2023 as it did in 1990.

Ray Liotta shines as low-level New York gangster Henry Hill, plunged into a world of glitz, glamour, thievery and violence in a story that runs from the 1950s to the 1980s. It’s through Hill’s eyes that Scorsese gradually uncovers the absolute moral rot at the heart of the mafia, personified in his two closest friends – a pair of cold-blooded killers faultlessly played by Robert De Niro and (the Oscar-winning) Joe Pesci.

Watch Goodfellas on Prime Video

Prisoners

Celebrated director Denis Villeneuve’s 2013 English language debut is a brilliant suspense thriller that also works as a family drama and character study. When two young girls go missing and the chief suspect is dismissed as a disturbed but harmless crank, a desperate father (Hugh Jackman) takes matters into his own hands in search of the truth – all while a relentlessly driven detective (Jake Gyllenhaal) pursues his own hunches about the case. Raw, tense and with new twists of the knife around every corner, this is a crime movie with real bite.

Watch Prisoners on Prime Video

American Beauty

Sam Mendes, later responsible for Road to Perdition, Jarhead, 1917 and the small matter of a couple of Bond films, made his big screen directing helming this unconventional, intelligent drama. It went on to bag no fewer than six Oscars, cement Kevin Spacey as one of the leading actors of his generation and ensure none of us ever looked at a wind-blown plastic bag in the same way again.

A bleakly comic examination of contemporary life through the eyes of Spacey’s jaded salaryman Lester Burnham, his ambitious wife Carolyn and troubled teenage daughter Jane, American Beauty shines a spotlight on the US suburbs. Here is a place of crushing conformity, banality, meanness and superficiality where, on rare occasions, one can still discern the fleeting appearance of pure, untarnished beauty just below the surface.

Watch American Beauty on Prime Video

Judas and the Black Messiah

Daniel Kaluuya won an Oscar for his towering portrayal of charismatic young Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, the would-be ‘black messiah’ whose Chicago-based chapter of the socialist, anti-racist organisation was infiltrated by the FBI.

Terrified that Hampton could unite disparate working-class communities and effect a revolution, the bureau recruited and coerced car thief William O’Neal (LaKeith Stanfield, also Oscar-nominated) to join the outfit, befriend and later betray Hampton. It’s a gripping and galling story, full of high drama, but it’s the two lead performances that demand the most attention.

Watch Judas and the Black Messiah on Prime Video

Shotgun Wedding

Jennifer Lopez plays a bride-to-be whose dream tropical island wedding to hunky Josh Duhamel is interrupted by a heavily armed group of pirates. Cue romantic comedy clichés flying out the window (to be replaced by action comedy clichés) as the couple fight to save their nuptials – and relationship – from disaster.

While Shotgun Wedding doesn’t exactly push the envelope when it comes to… well, anything, it’s never less than slickly made and enjoyable fluff, particularly when it comes to the supporting turns by Jennifer Coolidge and Lenny Kravitz.

Watch Shotgun Wedding on Prime Video

Alan Partridge: Stratagem

Steve Coogan brings his most enduring comic creation to the stage in this live show, now presented as a Prime-exclusive feature-length movie. Alan Partridge – here attempting to shill a self-help programme he calls Stratagem – really is a wonderful character, with his oddly English prejudices and peccadillos feeling instantly recognisable, and even if this live format perhaps doesn’t work as well as others, it’s still a pleasure to spend time with him.

Watch Alan Partridge: Stratagem on Prime Video

Freaks and Geeks (S1)

Before Judd Apatow and Paul Feig hit the big screen directing the likes of Knocked Up, The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Bridesmaids, they co-created a little TV comedy-drama based on Feig’s own adolescence in early 1980s Michigan. Dubbed Freaks and Geeks (most of its main characters fall into one or both of these categories) it lasted just one 18-episode season, something that’s still hard to fathom given how fantastic it is.

Perhaps viewers just weren’t ready for a well-written, warm and entirely honest portrayal of the highs and lows of high school. Despite its untimely demise, it kickstarted a bunch of major Hollywood careers (James Franco, Linda Cardellini, Jason Segel and Seth Rogen being the obvious examples) and is regarded as a cult classic 20 years later.

All the episodes are now streaming on Prime, so why not go back to school?

Watch Freaks and Geeks on Prime Video

Confessions of a Psycho Killer

Confessions of a Psycho Killer on Prime VideoConfessions of a Psycho Killer on Prime Video

Ignore the rather tacky title, which we assume was foisted on the filmmakers by producers keen to attract viewers. This feature-length documentary about Patrick Mackay, sometimes dubbed ‘Britain’s forgotten serial killer’, comes across as well-made, well-researched and interesting rather than salacious and titillating. It also raises some interesting questions about the role mental health services (or rather, the poor quality of them) may have played in the proliferation of British serial killers in the 1960s and 1970s.

Watch Confessions of a Psycho Killer on Prime Video

Men

Alec Garland’s follow-up to Annihilation and Ex Machina is another cerebral genre flick, this time a horror movie that tackles a range of themes (possibly too many of them to feel focussed).

Jessie Buckley is excellent as Harper, a young woman who, having gone through an appalling experience at home in London, decides to escape to the English countryside for a solo holiday. But despite her destination having all the hallmarks of a rural idyll – a charming church, a cosy pub, a characterful old house and some of the lushest-looking woods and fields we’ve ever seen on screen – Harper finds relaxation hard to come by. There’s also the disquieting fact that every male inhabitant of the village has the same face (that of Rory Kinnear) – not that Harper seems to notice this jarring detail. With a denouement that’s not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach, Men is a curious slow burn that has divided critics and viewers. We think it’s certainly intriguing enough that you should give it a shot – if you’re not too squeamish.

Watch Men on Prime Video

John Wick

Keanu Reeves does his best Keanu Reeves impression as John Wick, who was once a very bad man: an unstoppable assassin working for the nastiest of nasty gangsters; nothing less than “the guy you send to kill the boogieman”. But then he found love and retired his trigger fingers.

Inevitably his attempts at living the quiet life go horribly awry, culminating in the death of the cute puppy left to him by his late wife. Cue vengeful retaliation in the form of some of the finest gunplay committed to screen since, well, Keanu himself appeared in The Matrix. A truly wonderful action flick.

Watch John Wick on Prime Video

Three Pines (S1)

An author meets a gruesome death in a Canadian village – merely an unfortunate accident, or something more sinister? When wise Quebecois detective Armand Gamache (Alfred Molina, wonderful as ever) is sent to investigate, he quickly discovers that pretty much everyone in town had a motive for murder, and that the seemingly idyllic place is riven with secrets and shame.

That’s just the first in a series of four cases (each two episodes long) recounted in this original series, and there’s another plot, concerning the disappearance of an indigenous teenager, running throughout. Fans of Twin Peaks and other quirky crime stories will lap this up.

Watch Three Pines on Prime Video

Silent Night, Deadly Night

There’s nothing holy or peaceful about this festive horror film. It’s about an axe-wielding Santa Claus, so it’s definitely not one for the kids to sit down to after Christmas dinner, but it does put a completely different spin on what Santa does to the badly behaved. Kind of.

When an orphaned young man witnesses something that revives his childhood trauma (seeing his parents murdered by a killer in a Santa costume), he suffers a mental break that sees him becoming a deadly Father Christmas himself. Made in 1984, it’s hardly sophisticated horror by today’s standards, but for those in search of a little-known seasonally appropriate slasher – well, it’s a gift.

Watch Silent Night, Deadly Night on Prime Video

Glengarry Glen Ross

Four real estate agents – played by no less than Al Pacino, Kevin Spacey, Ed Harris and Jack Lemmon – are led into a professional sales endgame in which only two can leave with their jobs in this film noted for its enjoyably profanity-laden script (adapted by David Mamet from his own 1984 play of the same name). Despite an unimpressive box office showing on release, its strong performances have cemented it as a bona fide cult classic. The scene in which Alec Baldwin’s foul-mouthed motivational trainer is sent to gee up the salesmen is particularly memorable.

Watch Glengarry Glen Ross on Prime Video

Zodiac

David Fincher’s true-life tale of the Zodiac Killer and the men who tried to unmask him is a quiet masterpiece buoyed along by its tone, acting, editing and camerawork. Less showy than some of the director’s movies and entirely lacking in the sort of hysterical, overly dramatic approach taken by many serial killer films (including Fincher’s own Seven), Zodiac will likely leave you with more questions than answers – a traditional whodunnit with a neat and satisfying conclusion, this ain’t.

Looking back years after its release, we think it’s one of the finest films of the noughties and a modern classic: creepy, funny, stylish and thought-provoking, with impeccable performances from Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr. and Mark Ruffalo.

Watch Zodiac on Prime Video

The Lost Boys

A true cult classic, this tale of tearaway vampires and the teenagers hunting them (while trying to avoid becoming their next snack) is beloved by an entire generation – and even today it’s easy to see why. Stuffed with Hollywood icons of the era (Kiefer Sutherland, Jason Patric, both Corey Feldman and Corey Haim!) and an aesthetic that screams of its time and place (California in the 1980s), it’s also an involving story about the struggles of moving to a new place and starting a new life – all the more challenging when that place is plagued by a spate of mysterious murders and disappearances. A great teen horror flick that is rarely found on UK streaming services, so do drink deep of its campy delights while you can.

Watch The Lost Boys on Prime Video

My Policeman

Can Harry Styles really act? And does it really matter? Michael Grandage’s drama sees the pop icon don the uniform of a Brighton bobby sitting at the point of a tragic love triangle: he’s married to a woman (played by The Crown’s Emma Corrin) whom he likes, but having an affair with a man (David Dawson) with whom he’s in love.

Next to the talented Dawson and Corrin, Harry does seem a tad out of his depth, but his slightly stilted turn does nothing to spoil the tragic nature of the story, which will doubtless cause millions of Styles stans and regular viewers alike to shed a few tears. Events play out over two timelines: one in the repressed 1950s and another in more enlightened modern times, where the trio (now played by Gina McKee, Linus Roache and Rupert Everett) find their lives pushed together again in very different circumstances.

Watch My Policeman on Prime Video

Basic Instinct

Paul Verhoeven’s 1992 erotic thriller became notorious upon its release due to the convention-smashing nudity of leading lady Sharon Stone. It was a smash box office hit, spawning a number of subpar imitators over the next few years.

And yet despite its undeniably schlocky, sleazy nature, Basic Instinct is actually an enjoyably tense, fast-paced (and yes, sexy) murder mystery rich in noir overtones. Michael Douglas (in peak Michael Douglas mode) stars as a troubled San Francisco cop investigating the killing of a wealthy rock star, only to fall for the prime suspect: Stone’s femme fatale novelist.

Watch Basic Instinct on Prime Video

The Peripheral (S1)

Based on the novel by cyberpunk supremo William Gibson, this Amazon-produced sci-fi series stars Chloe Grace Moretz as a small-town girl with big VR gaming skills in a near-future America. When her ex-military brother says she can earn some extra money playing a highly realistic sim she jumps at the chance, only to find herself whisked to London in the year 2100 – which seems far too real to be a digital game world.

Thus begins a mind-bending action-thriller set across two different timelines, packed with crazy technology like invisible cars and murderous robot bodyguards.

Watch The Peripheral on Prime Video

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

Nicolas Cage plays himself (or more accurately an alternative-reality version of himself) in an enjoyably meta action-comedy that views the great man’s career and popular persona with a distinctly postmodern eye.

Struggling to get the parts he thinks he deserves and feeling his relationship with his teenage daughter grow more strained, Cage decides to quit acting, but not before taking one last job: guest of honour at the birthday party of a superfan (Pedro Pascal, clearly having a great time). Accompanied by the ghost of his digitally de-aged younger self, he travels to Spain for a final payday, depressed and resigned to a life out of the spotlight – only to find himself in the middle of a kidnapping plot.

Watch The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent on Prime Video

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (S1)

Amazon jacking up Prime Video’s subscription fee by around 20% right before the arrival of its biggest ever original series might smack of cynical price-gouging, but let’s face it: given the state of the real world right now, most of us would gladly shell out a few extra quid to spend more time in J.R.R. Tolkien’s picturesque Middle-Earth.

Set thousands of years before the events depicted in Peter Jackson’s movies (Sauron appears to ‘just a bloke’ here) this drama is the first time Tolkien’s Second Age has been brought to the screen. You already know the drill: elves, orcs, swords, dwarves, Balrogs and weeping hobbits (sorry, ‘harfoots’). The series has had a mixed reception overall, and we can certainly agree that it takes a long time to get going, but fantasy fanatics will lap it all up gleefully.

Watch The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power on Prime Video

Fury

David Ayer may be best known these days for directing two high-profile flops in Bright (Netflix’s big original movie release for Christmas 2017, which featured Will Smith as a tough Los Angeles cop forced to partner up with… an orc) and Suicide Squad, but a few years ago the he struck gold (or should that be steel?) with this grit-encrusted action-drama starring Brad Pitt as a tank commander in the last days of World War II.

Featuring some of the most convincing depictions of tank warfare in cinema – you can practically smell the grease, sweat and worse in the cramped confines of Pitt’s Sherman – there’s the occasional sense that Fury holds dramatic aspirations that it can’t quite match up to, but when the action is this electrifying, you’re unlikely to care that this isn’t quite Saving Private Ryan.

Watch Fury on Prime Video

Licorice Pizza

Paul Thomas Anderson is one of the most interesting and visionary film directors of the past 30 years, which makes every new film he releases something of an event picture – even this relatively low-key comedy drama set in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley in the 1970s. A coming-of-age story with two newcomers (Cooper Hoffman and Alana Haim) in the lead roles and a gently meandering plot about waterbeds, pinball, friendship and first love, Licorice Pizza is shot on vintage lenses to replicate the look of 70s movies – and genuinely feels like a film from a different, simpler era of cinema.

Watch Licorice Pizza on Prime Video

Seven

Of the seemingly endless number of serial killer movies that were released in the 90s and noughties, Seven stands apart. First, there’s its clever, gripping and tension-wracked plot, with a murderer punishing what he sees as society’s collective ‘sins’ in an unnamed, rain-soaked and thoroughly depressing American city. Second, there are the fine performances from Morgan Freeman (no surprises there) and hitherto pretty boy Brad Pitt, flexing his ‘I’m a serious actor’ muscles for perhaps the first time.

Then there’s the aesthetic, director David Fincher’s trademark desaturated colours, moody lighting and inventive camerawork giving the movie an unforgettable look that contributes to the overall feeling of bleakness. And that final, gut-wrenching twist? It’s simply to die for.

Watch Seven on Prime Video

The Mask

Jim Carrey is at his frenetic, rubber-faced early career best as the loser who turns into a manic, hot-stepping, zoot suit-wearing ball of confidence when he puts on an ancient cursed mask.

At the time of its release, The Mask was presented as a showcase for the most advanced CGI effects of the time (which, despite being noticeably ‘not real’, still hold up fairly well almost 30 years on), but it’s Carrey’s irresistible presence that makes everything work – and an honourable mention must go to Cameron Diaz in her breakout role as his femme fatale love interest. Schmmmmooookin’!

Watch The Mask on Prime Video

Spotlight

It takes a lot of tact to make a film about a delicate subject like Boston’s Catholic priest child sex abuse scandal, but the host of nominations and wins Spotlight earned over the 2016 award season should clue you in: director Tom McCarthy absolutely nailed it.

The star-studded cast helps, getting you invested in the hard-working team of Boston Globe investigative journalists right from the off. Michael Keaton, Liev Schreiber and Mark Ruffalo steal the show, but there are great performances from Stanley Tucci and Rachel McAdams too.

It’s tough to watch in places, but entirely engrossing and totally worth sticking through to the end – and a powerful reminder of why a free press is an essential part of any democracy.

Watch Spotlight on Prime Video

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

Based on three novels from Patrick O’Brian’s cherished Aubrey-Maturin series, Peter Weir’s ripping Napoleonic Wars epic is one of the most historically accurate depictions of early 19th century naval life (and death) ever put on the silver screen. You can smell the sea salt, boiled cabbage, unwashed bodies and gunpowder as the crew of the HMS Surprise, led by Captain “Lucky” Jack Aubrey (Russell Crowe), pursue a French privateer across the South Atlantic and Pacific.

From tense evasive manoeuvres to boozy ship’s dinners to battles filled with smoke, flame and splintered wood, this movie’s authenticity and attention to detail shines through – and most of it achieved without CGI chicanery, too. It’s a crying shame no more Aubrey-Maturin movies followed – with 21 books in O’Brian’s entire series, there’s plenty of source material to work from.

Watch Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World on Prime Video

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

If you’re compiling a list of the top ten most iconic horror movies of all time, Tobe Hooper’s lo-fi shocker is going to be on there. After an introductory voice-over warns us of the atrocities to come, Hooper rachets up the tension as a group of road-tripping teenagers gets side-tracked on a rural Texas highway. To reveal more would risk ruining the delightful surprises to come, but it’s probably not spoiling anything to say that, yes, some unconventional use of a chainsaw does take place. Great stuff.

Watch The Texas Chainsaw Massacre on Prime Video

The Terminal List (S1)

Chris Pratt as a Navy SEAL team leader? Who narrowly survives an ambush that might have been a setup? And now needs to protect the ones he loves from dark forces? Hm. This eight-part Amazon original series (directed by Training Day’s Antoine Fuqua) blends psychological thriller with action thriller as Pratt’s stony-faced operator tries to find the truth behind the massacre of his unit. Is he losing his mind? Paranoid? One thing’s for sure: a lot of bullets are going to be fired before he (and we) get the answers.

Watch The Terminal List on Prime Video

In the Loop

Before he was the twelfth Doctor Who, Peter Capaldi was best-known for playing fantastically foul-mouthed spin doctor Malcolm Tucker (a character inspired by New Labour’s Alastair Campbell). In this feature film – spun off from the BBC series The Thick of It – Tucker is part of a delegation sent to Washington to deal with rising tensions in the Middle East.

Writer Armando Iannucci’s take on the build-up to the Iraq War is at once farcical and bleak, as backstabbing politicos massage the evidence to create a case for intervention while scrambling to exclude each other from committees and action groups. Capaldi’s baroque cursing is the undoubted highlight, with the late James Gandolfini’s turn as an army general  a close second.

Watch In the Loop on Prime Video

Reservoir Dogs

Released an astonishing 30 years ago, Quentin Tarantino’s directorial debut has what would come to be seen as his trademark fingerprints all over it: think graphic violence, copious cussing, pop culture-peppered dialogue, a non-linear timeline and an achingly cool soundtrack. Nowadays these are the things we expect – nay, demand – from QT and his legions of imitators, but back in the early 90s this low-budget debut felt raw, vital and incredibly new.

After a jewellery store heist goes awry, the surviving theives reconvene in a warehouse to lay low and find out what went wrong. Was it mere bad luck or is had a mole tipped off the cops? Twisting, turning and carried along with great performances from Tim Roth, Harvey Keitel, Steve Buscemi and an unforgettably scary Michael Madsen, Reservoir Dogs may not be Tarantino’s best, but it’s a belter all the same.

Watch Reservoir Dogs on Prime Video

Venom

Tom Hardy stars as shapeshifting, alien symbiote-infested antihero Brock in this Sony-produced Marvel movie, which exists in a separate “cinematic universe” to Disney’s shiny Avengers series. That gives the movie some leeway to be a tad darker and grittier than Marvel fans might be used to – somewhat refreshingly so, we reckon.

Don’t go into it expecting a classic or anything, but Hardy’s game performance and the creepiness of the extraterrestrial entity make for an enjoyably offbeat superhero romp.

Watch Venom on Prime Video

Wind River

On a remote Wyoming Indian reservation, a young Native American woman’s body is found in the snow – and whoever is responsible looks unlikely to be found, let alone brought to justice. Enter lone, out-of-her-depth FBI agent Elizabeth Olsen, who ropes in local tracker Jeremy Renner to bring the mystery to a shocking conclusion.

Despite the two A-list leads, Wind River flew somewhat under the radar upon its release – unfairly, we say: its fast-paced script (from Sicario and Hell or High Water writer Taylor Sheridan, who also directs) and well-drawn characters make it a must-watch for fans of gripping, thoughtful drama.

Watch Wind River on Prime Video

House of Gucci

An all-star line-up including Al Pacino, Jared Leto, Salma Hayek and Jeremy Irons makes Ridley Scott’s stylish tale of greed, family, intrigue and murder feel as sumptuous and ostentatious as the legendary fashion house’s clothes. Adam Driver and Lady Gaga lead the cast as Maurizio Gucci and his ambitious wife Patrizia Reggiani, who in spite of her humble roots is determined to remake the brand in her own image; if blood has to be spilled to make that happen, so be it.

Watch House of Gucci on Prime Video

Candyman (2021)

Serving both as sequel to and reboot for the 1990s cult classic of the same name, Nia DaCosta’s horror film (co-written by Jordan Peele) once again explores the urban legend of a ghostly hook-wielding killer, summoned by speaking his name five times while looking into a mirror: Candyman, Candyman, Candyman, Candyman…

While it functions quite well as a straight-up scary movie, DaCosta and Peele make few attempts to hide the fact that they’re using Candyman as a vehicle to make Important Points About Society. Horror films have done this forever, of course – and Peele’s own Get Out is a masterpiece of this – but cloaking the satirical barb a little more opaquely may have made this film a more enjoyable watch.

Watch Candyman on Prime Video

The Lost Boys

A true classic, this tale of teenage vampires and the teenagers hunting them (while trying to avoid becoming their next snack) is beloved by an entire generation – and even today it’s easy to see why. Packed with screen icons of its era (Kiefer Sutherland, Jason Patric, both Corey Feldman and Corey Haim!) and an aesthetic that screams of its time and place (California in the 1980s), it’s also an involving and well-paced story about the struggles of moving to a new place and starting a new life – all the more challenging when that place is plagued by a spate of mysterious murders and disappearances. A great teen horror flick that has rarely been on UK streaming services – so drink deep of its campy delights while you can.

Watch The Lost Boys on Prime Video

Children of Men

When it was first released back in 2006, Children of Men’s near-future British setting seemed like a particularly pessimistic take on the direction in which humanity was heading. A decade and a bit later, post-Brexit, COVID-19, war in Europe et al, it seems eerily prescient in its deft presentation of a green and pleasant land turned grey and grim, robbed of hope by multiple crises: climate change; a vast influx of refugees fleeing wars and failed foreign states; nuclear attacks; terrorism; and, worst of all, a lack of children.

The human race has become totally infertile, you see, with the last baby being born 18 years before the events of the film. But Children of Men does more than just build a depressingly plausible dystopia – it weaves together a thrilling noirish plot, featuring some of the best one-shot takes in modern cinema.

Watch Children of Men on Amazon Freevee

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