Amazon Prime Video’s original series May table is a study of literary contrasts. On the one hand we have The Underground Railroad (May 14), a prestige limited series by Oscar winner Barry Jenkins (Moonlight), which adapts the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Colson Whitehead. History barn burner imagining slaves escaping captivity via a network of literal underground locomotives. On the other hand, we panic! (28th of May). Based on the book by YA writer Lauren Oliver, this exploitative thriller seeks to put attractive teenagers into frightening situations in order to face their ultimate fears.
I don’t know about you, but I’ll turn to the former first. Jenkins aside, The Underground Railroad is simply one of the most compelling novels I’ve read in the past decade. This book explores America’s darkest legacy in a matter steeped in metaphors and meanings. The ornate trailer certainly promises a lot, both in terms of the narrative (which follows the troubles of Cora fleeing a Georgia plantation pursued by the ruthless slaver Ridgeway) and in terms of luscious graphics. Amazon is clearly striving for HBO prestige here:
Panic, as the breathless title suggests, is much less haughty, mixing a cast of unknown young actors with one insanely silly premise: what if you could escape your boring small-town existence by winning a game to face? and overcome – various fear-inducing situations, from breaking into a person’s house to defying a night in a haunted house. What if actually. There’s no trailer for this yet, but it definitely sounds like it was built for bingeing.
Also released this month is Solos (May 21), an anthology series with a loosey-goosey concept (“The seven-part anthology series explores the strange, beautiful, heartbreaking, funny, wondrous truths of what it means to be a person According to a press release) and an honestly stunning cast including Morgan Freeman, Anne Hathaway, Helen Mirren, Anthony Mackie, Dan Stevens and Constance Wu.
All that and a few old movies: Here’s everything coming to Amazon Prime Video in May 2021.
1st of May
- Alien: Resurrection (1997)
- Alien 3 (1992)
- Aliens (1986)
- Almost Famous (2000)
- Angels & Demons (2009)
- Betrayed (1988)
- Bound (1996)
- Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo (1999)
- Dinosaur 13 (2014)
- Fascination (2004)
- Flight (2012)
- Flight plan (2005)
- Georgia Rule (2018)
- Green Zone (2010)
- Gunsight Ridge (1957)
- Hidalgo (2004)
- How Stella got her groove back (1998)
- Jump the Broom (2011)
- Knowledge (2009)
- Leatherheads (2008)
- Nanny Mcphee (2006)
- Nanny McPhee Returns (2010)
- A Nice Day (1996)
- Priest (2011)
- Reign of Fire (2002)
- Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004)
- Resident Evil (2002)
- Rio (2011)
- Sahara (1983)
- Scent of a Woman (1992)
- See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989)
- Shattered (1991)
- The Age of Adaline (2015)
- The Dalton Girls (1957)
- The Da Vinci Code (2006)
- The French Connection (1971)
- The Green Hornet (2011)
- The Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia (2013)
- The Indian in the Closet (1995)
- The Ladykiller (2004)
- The Men Who Star At Goats (2009)
- The Outsider (1980)
- The Secret Life of Bees (2008)
- The sixth sense (1999)
- The Cutest Thing (2002)
- The Towering Inferno (1974)
- Two for the Money (2005)
- Unbreakable (2000)
- Lookout point (2008)
5th of May
May 7th
- The Boy from Medellín – Amazon Original Film (2020)
- Injury (2020)
May 9
May 13th
May 14th
- The Underground Railroad – Amazon Original Series: Season 1
May 19
- Red Dawn (2012)
- Trumbo (2015)
May 21
- P! Nk: Everything I Know So Far – Amazon Original Movie (2021)
- Solos – Amazon Original Series: Limited Series
28th of May
- Panic – Amazon Original Series: Season 1
This article was edited after publication; In a previous version, Barry Jenkins was mistakenly identified as the director of Twelve Years a Slave.
