Blockbuster is long dead, but if there’s a streaming equivalent to the video rental giant in 2026, it’s probably Prime Video.
The streamer offers thousands of titles for rent or purchase, and hundreds of films that are available to stream for an annual subscription fee.
To prepare for the fall season, Prime Video has added several new horror and thriller pictures that are perfect to watch during spooky season.
If you want to be entertained this weekend, Watch With Us recommends placing the Anthony Hopkins-led Oscar-winning thriller The Silence of the Lambs, the Meryl Streep action flick The River Wild and the 1980s cult classic They Live in your watchlist queue.
‘The Silence of the Lambs’ (1991)
Jodie Foster in The Silence of the Lambs Orion/Everett
Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) is an FBI trainee who’s thrown to the wolves on her latest assignment — she has to interview convicted murderer Hannibal Lecter (Hopkins). A serial killer named Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine) is abducting and killing women seemingly at random, and Starling thinks Lecter can help capture him. But Lecter’s participation comes at a price — he wants to know Clarice inside and out, and she has to reveal her greatest fears to get him to assist her. How much is Clarice willing to reveal to Lecter to capture Bill? And can she trust that anything he says will be of help to her?
At the 1992 Academy Awards ceremony, The Silence of the Lambs won Oscars in the top 5 categories — only the third time that’s happened in the Academy’s history. It was also the first outright horror film to win Best Picture, and in a year that also saw classics like Thelma and Louise and JFK capture the public’s attention. But this movie is on another level than any other due to its gripping narrative and mesmerizing lead performances. Hopkins only appears onscreen for 16 minutes, but he dominates the film as the most charming and eloquent psychopath the movies have ever produced. The Silence of the Lambs is 35 years old, but it’s lost none of its power to fascinate, engage and horrorify whomever is watching it.
‘The River Wild’ (1994)
Meryl Streep and Kevin Bacon in The River Wild. Universal/courtesy Everett Collection
Gail (Meryl Streep) and Tom (David Strathairn) are a longtime couple whose marriage is strained due to Tom’s obsession with work. Eager for a reset, they take their son, Roarke (Jurassic Park’s Joseph Mazzello), white-water rafting in Idaho. Gail’s an experienced rafter, and she’s friendly enough to invite strangers Wade (Kevin Bacon) and Terry (John C. Reilly) along after they lose their tour guide. But Gail soon discovers Wade and Terry are actually escaped convicts, and they hold her family hostage in exchange for her help in guiding them out of the wilderness. The river might be wild, but it’s no match for two desperate men who will do anything to ensure their freedom.
Meryl Streep in an action picture? Yeah, it happened. The ‘90s were a strange time, but The River Wild is less like a Sly Stallone picture (there are no corny one-liners) than a family drama with the occasional action sequence. Streep, of course, is great as a wife and mother under constant pressure to keep her family safe, while Bacon is effective as a career criminal who uses his charm to trick others into getting what he wants. Director Curtis Hanson, who would later helm the excellent noir film L.A. Confidential, stages the action on the water beautifully; white-water rafting has never looked more beautiful — and dangerous — as it does in the film, and you really believe Streep is the only person who can save everyone from certain death.
‘They Live’ (1988)
Nada (Roddy Piper) is a Los Angeles construction worker who witnesses a hacker and preacher get brutalized by the police after claiming the world is secretly run by an unknown cabal. They leave behind a pair of sunglasses, and after putting them on, Nada realizes they’re right — the world has been overrun by aliens in disguise, and the only way to see them is through the glasses he’s wearing. These aliens want to accelerate global warming to terraform Earth to resemble their home planet, and the only people who can stop it are Nada, his friend and coworker Frank (Keith David) and a mysterious woman named Holly (Meg Foster). But how can three people battle an alien army that’s already winning the war?
They Live is an eerily prescient sci-fi film hiding under the guise of a meat-and-potatoes B-movie action picture. Director John Carpenter delivers all the rowdy fights you’d expect in a Roddy Piper picture, but he also tells a power-to-the-people socialist story that urges its viewers to rage against the capitalist machine that’s controlling them. Hidden messages like “Obey” and “Consume” are revealed when Nada wears his sunglasses, and Carpenter isn’t subtle in indicating where his sympathies lie. You can dismiss They Live as a cheesy alien-invaders film (although why would you?), but its overall message is more relevant in 2026 than it ever was in 1988. Carpenter is right — the aliens are among us, and they want us to be subservient while they rape our planet.
