A Peaky Blinders Star’s Underrated Thriller Is Now Streaming on Peacock

Peaky Blinders officially came to an end with its feature-length film, Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, on Netflix last month, but fans can now stream one of the show’s stars’ underrated thrillers on Peacock. The NBCUniversal streamer has a pretty stacked lineup of movies in its library and grows that collection every month with the arrival of new titles. As Peacock added the Blade trilogy and debuted its new show The Miniature Wife in April, it also added a 2005 psychological thriller that deserves more attention.

Before he was Thomas “Tommy” Shelby, the iconic, intense leader of the Shelby crime family, on Peaky Blinders, Cillian Murphy was Jackson Rippner, a charming yet menacing operative facilitating the assassination of a U.S. politician in Red Eye. The Wes Craven-directed film started streaming on Peacock on April 1st and also stars Rachel McAdams as Lisa Reisert, a hotel manager held hostage on a plane by Murphy’s character and coerced into participating in the assassination plot. The movie hit theaters in August 2005 and was initially seen as just a “good B-movie” but has become something of an underappreciated cult favorite in the years since.

Cillian Murphy Teamed Up With Wes Craven for an Edge-Of-Your-Seat Thriller With Red Eye

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If you’re looking for a nail-biting experience, Red Eye should be at the top of your watchlist on Peacock. Although the movie was outside of Craven’s typical horror wheelhouse and lacked his trademark gory, supernatural elements, the filmmaker applied his mastery of terror to create high-altitude tension that doesn’t letup throughout the duration of the 85-minute runtime. The confined setting of the plane amplifies the anxiety to unbearable levels, and Murphy and McAdams perfectly carry the movie’s cat-and-mouse dynamic with vulnerability and menacing charm, making the claustrophobic, high-stakes battle on the plane highly effective and completely engrossing to watch.

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While the movie was massively overlooked, Red Eye remains a a hidden gem in both Craven’s and Murphy’s filmographies and a tense thriller that is definitely worth rediscovering. The film scored a “Certified Fresh” critic score on Rotten Tomatoes of 80%, the fourth-highest for Craven and ranking at No. 15 for Murphy. In terms of audience consensus, Red Eye didn’t perform quite as well,= but still scored a fresh 64% Popcornmeter score, with viewers describing it as “a gripping political-thriller concept with solid tension and engaging conflict” and “the best kind of B movie.”

What’s New on Peacock?

Red Eye is far from the only movie freshly streaming on Peacock. This month has already seen the streamer stock titles like Airplane!, the Blade trilogy, Dead Poets Society, Face/Off, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and Five Nights at Freddy’s 2. Peacock is scheduled to add even more titles later in April, including Nosferatu on April 21st and Five Nights at Freddy’s on April 26th.

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