7 Best Movies on Prime Video That You Didn’t Know Were Streaming

Right now, Amazon’s Prime Video service has their original film You’re Cordially Invited, the Channing Tatum-led Blink Twice, the animated mega hit The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Jurassic World, and another Prime original, Shotgun Wedding, in the Top 10. But what about the movies that aren’t being displayed to everyone on the Prime Video homepage? The movies that have a greater likelihood of slipping under everyone’s collective radar but shouldn’t, regardless of genre preference. Those are the movies that follow. Some were hits when first released, some were moderate successes at best. So, whether it’s going to be your first time watching them or your second or third, these experiences are worth clicking “Play” for.

From the war on drugs to a war on werewolves, these movies cover all the bases. There’s even a rom-com tossed in for good measure in case you need a double dose of laughs after You’re Cordially Invited.

50 First Dates

Adam Sandler is at his best when he’s playing against type, as in Uncut Gems, or when he’s teamed up with Drew Barrymore, such as in The Wedding Singer or 50 First Dates (the less said about Blended, the better). A charming if also occasionally crass film, 50 First Dates displays the same chemistry Sandler and Barrymore shared in The Wedding Singer, but tosses in a memorably inventive premise, too.

Sandler plays Henry Roth, a veterinarian who seems to be with a new woman each weekend. But his womanizing ways reach a dead end when he meets art teacher Lucy Whitmore at his favorite local cafe. Yet, the next time the two run into one another at the same cafe, she has no idea who he is. Roth learns that Whitmore has a form of amnesia that prevents her from generating short-term memories after going to sleep, so he has to prove his worth to her each and every new day.

The Cabin in the Woods

The Cabin in the Woods is an entirely unconventional comedy horror genre-blender that, like The Evil Dead, follows a group of college-aged youths as they venture out to a remote, well, cabin in the woods. There, the group is stalked and picked off by a group of zombie hillbillies. But the thing is those zombie hillbillies are under the control of a group of bored, average Joe technicians. The much larger question is, just who do those technicians serve?

An extremely impressive directorial debut, Drew Goddard’s off-kilter film was one of the 2010s’ best theatrical experiences. It throws so many truly inventive curveballs at the audience that even those averse to horror will be keen to give it a second viewing. It’s also graced with an impressive cast, including House of Cards‘ Kristen Connolly, a fresh-off-of-Thor Chris Hemsworth (though both films were shot right around the same time), and the hilarious combination of Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford as the technicians.

Commando

Arnold Schwarzenegger was always known for spouting out one-liners during action scenes. And, if you’ve heard any of those one-liners, they almost certainly came from one of three places. Predator, the first two Terminator films, or Commando.

Commando was released just one year after The Terminator helped put Schwarzenegger on the map in a big way, albeit as a villain, and it was the film in which he was given his first lead action hero role (not counting Conan the Barbarian) that he’d become so well known for. The film follows his perfectly named Colonel John Matrix, who goes on a violent quest to save his daughter, Jenny (Alyssa Milano) from a Latin American dictator. Along the way, he teams up with an off-duty flight attendant (Rae Dawn Chong) and is forced to go head-to-head with the rabid Captain Simon Bennett, a former member of Matrix’s own unit discharged for his sadistic bloodlust.

Dog Soldiers

Neil Marshall’s Dog Soldiers may not be getting the sequel fans have wanted for years any time soon, but we’ll always have the original. It’s a film that has seen its fanbase and reputation grow over the years, but there’s always room for more growth. The story follows a squad of British soldiers conducting a training exercise in the Scottish Highlands. They’re supposed to be going up against a Special Air Service unit, but much to the British squad’s dismay, the SAS unit is found not just dead but torn to pieces. Soon, the squad starts being picked off, so they take refuge in an isolated house, shown to them by a zoologist named Megan. But soon the isolated house is stormed by the slayers of the SOS squad, and according to Megan, they’re werewolves.

Dog Soldiers made for an impressive directorial debut for Marshall, who would follow it up with another modern horror classic in The Descent three years later. Unfortunately, his subsequent filmography hasn’t lived up to the promising talent shown in those first two films (though Doomsday and Centurion are both worth a watch), but Dog Soldiers still showed an artist capable of bringing something new to what was once a worn-out subgenre. It’s a viewing experience that is sure to please both action and horror fans alike. Not to mention, as far as third-act twists go, this film is top-notch.

[RELATED: The Best Classic Horror Movies on Prime Video Right Now]

The Grey

When 2008’s Taken became a smash success in early 2008, Liam Neeson entered an exciting new phase of his career. He’d been in action films before, sure, but this phase had him as a powerhouse star of his action films. Everyone else was just there to assist his characters or were on the receiving end of his character’s punches. And, from 2011’s Unknown to 2024’s Absolution, Neeson has headlined a whopping 17 fairly straightforward, modestly budgeted actioners. A few of them have been total duds, like the two Taken sequels, Honest Thief, Blacklight, and Retribution, but a few of them have been superior to the film that kicked off this phase of his career, such as Non-Stop, A Walk Among the Tombstones, The Marksman, Cold Pursuit, and the best of the bunch, Joe Carnahan’s The Grey.

The film follows sharpshooter John Ottway, who is stationed at an Alaska oil facility to protect them from grey wolves. Feeling defeated by the recent death of his wife, Ottway is nonetheless tasked with keeping his fellow workers safe, which has recently become a very tall order now that their flight from the facility to Anchorage has crashed and they’re stranded out in the middle of a freezing-cold wilderness. At the station, he could have a firmer control over wolf attacks, but out in the wilderness? They’re everywhere, and they’re circling.

Pitch Black

The film that kicked off the Vin Diesel franchise (one year before The Fast and the Furious started his long-running money printer), Pitch Black is a far more restrained film than the maligned The Chronicles of Riddick. Whereas Diesel’s Riddick would later become the protagonist in that aforementioned box office bomb and the 2013 course correction Riddick, here he’s just a mysterious criminal being transported to his newest prison home. But when the transport spacecraft is struck by comet debris and crash lands on a barren planet, he and his fellow travelers come to learn that the planet, usually kept lit by three suns, is on the verge of an eclipse. And when that happens, a seemingly infinite number of teeth-gnashing photosensitive creatures are going to rule the roost.

Diesel is at his best here. With comparatively limited screen time, he’s able to make a meal of each and every one of Riddick’s scenes. The deceptively complex character is also arguably still his best to date, with a complicated past and a good heart that struggles to break through his rough exterior. Toss in solid supporting work from Radha Mitchell, Cole Hauser, and The Thing‘s Keith David and Pitch Black is one of the better creature features to come out of the aughts.

Sicario

Perhaps it’s for the best Emily Blunt doesn’t show up for a third Sicario film, just as she didn’t play a part in Sicario: Day of the Soldado, because her Kate Macer is given one of the best arcs to come out of a 2010s movie. Macer is an FBI special agent who co-leads a raid on a cartel safe house that ends in an explosive disaster. But that was not an outcome easy to foresee, and Macer’s higher-ups see her potential to be of greater use in the war against the cartels. She’s recruited to join a joint task force under the watchful eye of gruff CIA officer Matt Graver and a mysterious prosecutor turned assassin, Alejandro Gillick.

As the outsider of the group, Macer learns about the dangers of this war as the audience does, and as her moral compass is stressed in one direction and the other, the audience grows to truly empathize with her predicament. As she learns more about Graver and Gillick, the group in which she’s found herself to be a part only becomes more complicated, as nothing in the war on drugs is as black and white as she suspected.

Which of these will you be streaming on Prime Video? Let us know in the comments!