The girls have to rely on each other for survival and through this process, character backstories begin to reveal themselves to viewers through flashbacks. What dramatic thriller do you get when you throw Euphoria and Lost in a blender? The Wilds! Here's the gist: Eight troubled teenage girls are flying private to Kona, Hawaii, to take part in an empowerment retreat called Dawn of Eve when their plane crashes and leaves them stranded on a deserted island. How far will they go to take home the $50K prize? And is this secret game the only secret dwelling in this small town? Starring familiar faces Mike Faist ( West Side Story, Dear Evan Hansen), Olivia Welch ( Unbelievable, Modern Family), Jessica Sula ( Split, Skins), and Ray Nicholson ( Promising Young Woman) among others, this one-hour drama is made for fans of Nerve and The Hunger Games.Īvailable to watch on Amazon Prime Video on May 28.
In Panic, the only way to win is to face your deepest and darkest fears. The game is unpredictable, and this year, the rules have changed and the pot is the highest it’s ever been. Each summer, a group of these teens compete in a secret game with dangerous challenges with the hopes of walking away with the grand prize - enough money to hit the road and get a head start on their future. The story is set in Carp, Texas, a small and unextraordinary town filled with recent high school graduates that are itching to get out. She also wrote the adaptation and serves as the show’s executive producer, along with Joe Roth, Jeff Kirschenbaum, and Adam Schroeder. The show is an adaptation of Lauren Oliver’s bestselling novel of the same name. If you’re at the end of Cruel Summer and are panicking about what you’ll watch once the season ends, then look no further than Amazon’s latest YA series, Panic. Watch it on Amazon Prime Video, available now.
With that in mind, I suggest you really take in each episode - the sounds, the vivid colors, the sweeping landscapes - before continuing to follow Cora’s journey to freedom.
The Underground Railroad is not meant to be binged in a day and wiped away when the next hot prestige series hit streaming. The series also touches on other real-life horrors Black people experienced beyond slavery, including sterilization, medical experimentation, and the Oregon exclusionary act. Jenkins' directing style is quiet and restrained, giving room for viewers to watch the story unfold. Being mindful of everyone's mental health on set, Jenkins brought on a team of therapists to help the actors depicting this trauma. However, Jenkins deviates from the trauma porn norm of bloody torment to also portray Black resilience, Black love, and Black joy.
The first episode is a difficult one to digest, especially for Black viewers, filled with similar themes one would expect to see in stories of slavery - a whipping, a slave being burned alive. The series incorporates fantasy, which helps alleviate the trauma of some of the harsher scenes and gives the viewer time to recuperate before continuing through the story. In it, the underground railroad is reimagined into a literal locomotive that runs underground, stopping at different stations to transport Black slaves to freedom. Academy Award–winning director Barry Jenkins ( Moonlight, If Beale Street Could Talk) adapts Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel of the same name for this limited series, which chronicles Cora Randall, a runaway slave, and her journey for freedom in the antebellum South.