Are you overwhelmed by the huge selection of streaming services? Then our carefully selected tips will help you. This week we would like to recommend three recommended films for the coming week on Amazon Prime Video.
New titles are added to streaming providers almost every day – films, series, mini-series and documentaries. You quickly lose perspective. But luckily you have us! Week after week we look for recommended classics, overlooked film gems and absolute insider tips in the Amazon Prime Video offering, which are available free of charge with a valid subscription.
This time, thriller and mystery lovers as well as fans of monumental literary adaptations will get their money’s worth.
“Blue Velvet” (1986)
The film world was shocked when David Lynch, one of the most influential directors of his generation, died in mid-January 2026 at the age of 78. The multi-talent (Lynch was also successful as a musician and painter, among other things) left behind a multitude of cinematic masterpieces, including the ambiguous, Oscar-winning mystery thriller „Blue Velvet“ counts.
It all starts with a cut off human ear. Student Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan), who has returned to his hometown, finds this on a grassy green meadow. Together with the police officer’s daughter Sandy Williams (“Jurassic Park” star Laura Dern), he looks for clues as to who this ear could belong to. The two of them penetrate deeper and deeper into a hell of perversion, obsession and human violence, in which the mysterious nightclub singer Dorothy (Isabella Rossellini) plays a crucial role.
“Blue Velvet” bei Prime Video*
91 percent critical approval on Rotten Tomatoes, an IMDb audience rating of 7.7 (as of the end of February 2026) and the FILMSTARTS top rating of 5 stars speak for themselves: “Blue Velvet” is one of the best suspense films of the 80s!
As a master of the surreal, Lynch creates a multi-layered neo-noir thriller that penetrates into the subconscious of his characters and also radically exposes the mendacity and bigotry of the bourgeois small town idyll. Unforgettable: Dennis Hopper as the sadistic psychopath Frank Booth, whose madness and obsession still make you shudder today. With him, the screen legend (“Easy Rider”) created one of the most frightening villains in film history.
“The Count of Monte Cristo” (2024)
In the mid-19th century, the Frenchman Alexandre Dumas achieved a milestone in literary history with “The Count of Monte Cristo,” which has been adapted over 40 times for cinema and TV. In 2024, the French director duo Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre De La Patellière dared to reinterpret the famous story about the sailor Edmond Dantès, who takes bloody revenge as the Count of Monte Cristo.
Retribution and justice: these are the core themes of “The Count of Monte Cristo”. And they are the driving force behind Dantès (Pierre Niney), who has been innocently imprisoned in a dark dungeon on a remote prison island for 14 years. He fell victim to a dark intrigue, which not only caused him to lose his respected position as ship captain – but also his great love, Mercédès (Anaïs Demoustier). After escaping the island, he hunts down his traitors. With the trailer you can get in the mood for the visually stunning film by Delaporte and de La Patellière:
“Huge” is an apt synonym for “The Count of Monte Cristo,” which was the most expensive French production of 2024 with a budget of almost 43 million euros. Instead of relying on CGI, the epic, three-hour adventure film was made in original locations (Paris, Marseilles), and millions were invested in sets, equipment and props.
It is precisely this authenticity that characterizes the film, which is also the opinion of our author Michael Meyns FILMSTARTS review (3.5 out of 5 stars). For him, the latest film adaptation of the Count on his quest for revenge is “[…] a richly featured adventure filmwhich seems completely old-fashioned, but is damn well entertaining.”
“The Count of Monte Cristo” on Prime Video*
“A Cure For Wellness” (2016)
The main character in our third streaming tip does not have to endure in a dark prison dungeon but in a secluded, mysterious sanatorium. The German-American co-production “A Cure For Wellness” follows the young Wall Street broker Lockhart (“American Primeval” star Dane DeHaan) to a wellness center in the Swiss Alps. The ambitious employee is supposed to bring the CEO of his company back to the USA. However, strange things are going on in the castle-like property – and Lockhart soon becomes a patient himself in a Kafkaesque world with no escape.
The film, which was shot at great expense almost entirely in Germany, turned out to be one of the biggest flops of the 2017 cinema season (budget: $40 million) with box office figures of under $27 million. Completely incomprehensible, because director Verbinski Mountains (“Pirates of the Caribbean”), with its beautifully photographed mix of clinical horror, fantasy and scary thriller, is a symbolically charged and extremely eventful trip that you won’t forget in a hurry.
There are also some truly horrific “treatment scenes” in which the boundaries between delusion and reality become increasingly blurred. Dentist terror (greetings from the “Marathon Man”), isolated water tanks and bizarre eel therapies make the sanatorium a place of horror!
With its dreamlike, hypnotizing atmosphere and constant feeling of threat, the film is reminiscent of genre titles such as “Gothika” and the great classics of psychological horror (“Shining”, “Shutter Island” and others). Our chief critic Christoph Petersen forgave strong 4 out of 5 stars. For him, Verbinski’s institutional horror is “an atmospheric and visually intoxicating gothic horrorfest.”
“A Cure For Wellness” bei Prime Video*
With the “Shining” sequel “Doctor Sleeps Awakens,” horror expert Mike Flanagan (“The Fall of the House of Usher”) once created a highly acclaimed, ominous King adaptation for the big screen. In 2025, Flanagan took on another work by the horror pope – but it has absolutely nothing to do with horror. Prime subscribers have recently been able to stream the critically acclaimed drama for free:
Forget “IT” & Co.: One of the best Stephen King film adaptations is now available as a subscription on Amazon Prime Video!
*The links to the Amazon offer are so-called affiliate links. If you purchase through these links or take out a subscription, we receive a commission. This has no effect on the price.
