Panic review: Amazon’s series about a teen fear contest should draw more blood

Turning victims’ worry right into a sport is nothing new for movie and TV, although it’s seen extra usually in horror motion pictures just like the Noticed franchise and Escape Room than in mainstream young-adult fiction. However Amazon’s new YA sequence Panic finds a brand new twist on the thought. In Panic, graduating high-schoolers in fictional small-town Carp, Texas, play in a summer-long match known as Panic that includes dealing with their biggest fears for an opportunity to win $50,000. Tailored from the YA ebook of the identical title by present creator Lauren Oliver, Panic follows the present yr’s gamers as they make their means by way of the sport. On the identical time, Carp’s sheriff’s division is investigating the earlier yr’s sport, during which two gamers died. Panic is an entertaining present, nevertheless it focuses an excessive amount of on the investigation and determining who runs the Panic video games, to the detriment of the teenage foremost characters and the sport itself.

Carp seems like an inescapable entice to its youngsters, who want for higher issues, like stardom or faculty and a future, however are largely more likely to find yourself in dead-end jobs and poverty. The Panic match represents each a doable escape route and a distraction. The contestants are prompted to carry out death-defying and unlawful acts, from cliff-diving to breaking and coming into. They’re requested to take deadly dangers, or to spend time in scary conditions in confined areas or haunted homes. The yr that the present takes place is important each due to the $50,000 prize — the most important pot within the historical past of the sport — and the deaths the earlier yr. One of many victims was the sheriff’s son, and the police are doing their greatest to seek out out who runs Panic, supposedly to maintain the city’s teenagers secure, however largely to get justice for the useless.

Every Panic participant has their very own drama and secrets and techniques. Timid Heather Nill (Olivia Welch) doesn’t initially plan to play, however be part of the sport in a nihilistic rush after her mom steals her faculty cash to pay for automotive repairs. Natalie Williams (Jessica Sula), Heather’s greatest buddy, deliberate to play from the start, and feels betrayed when Heather begins competing. Ray Corridor (Ray Nicholson), the fearless class unhealthy boy (and “probably a psychopath”), is the frontrunner to win. Dodge Mason (Mike Faist), the “new child” who moved to city a yr in the past, rapidly turns into one other frontrunner, and nobody is aware of his true motivations for taking part in. Together with these 4 and their households, the present brings in different present Panic gamers, the city police power, earlier Panic gamers, all their household and employers, and even a tiger. Ultimately, so many names get thrown round that it’s onerous to maintain up with who’s who.

Photograph: Matt Lankes/Amazon Studios

The present’s foremost draw is the Panic video games, which play like a sanitized model of the teenager dramas in latest Gen-Z tales like Euphoria and Genera+ion. Panic isn’t graphic about its intercourse or drug, although there’s a little bit gore. The present’s most heightened moments come from Panic periods. Because the challenges peel off the teenager characters’ defenses to point out their true motivations, it’s fascinating to see what scares every participant, and whether or not they hesitate on a problem, assist fellow gamers out of a entice, or cheat. In a present with many twists and turns, not all of them essential, understanding the subsequent spherical of the sport is on the horizon retains the present participating.

Present creator Lauren Oliver, who wrote each episode and executive-produced the sequence, makes many adjustments to her personal ebook. Carp has moved from upstate New York to Texas, with some characters re-imagined as rangers who compete in demolition derbies and rodeos. The transfer to Texas is a brilliant change, permitting for greater outside challenges and a few nice pure lighting, though the claustrophobia from the Carp of the novel will get misplaced amongst Carp’s extensive lawns and the characters’ speedboat days on the native lake.

Oliver additionally expands on among the foremost characters’ motivations, most drastically with Ray Corridor, who’s a one-note, rote villain within the ebook. Within the present, he turns into a misunderstood insurgent who lives as much as Carp’s expectations of him, whereas additionally resenting the judgmental picture they’ve. Oliver has stated in interviews that the present’s Ray was meant to be a generic “piece of shit” till the casting of Nicholson (Promising Younger Girl) made her rework his complete story arc. It’s straightforward to know why, as Nicholson has probably the most charisma of the forged, and appears probably the most pure in his function. He additionally takes half in a conventional YA love triangle with Heather and her greatest buddy Bishop (Camron Jones), which is simpler to sit down by way of due to the superb chemistry between Nicholson and Welch. (The second couple of the present, Natalie and Dodge, by no means feels notably compelling, regardless that Sula and Faist give commendable performances.)

Alongside the sport, the present’s second plot follows Sheriff James Cortez (Enrique Murciano) and his deputies as they examine the sport. Oliver created the police-procedural plot and a lot of the associated characters for the present, for the reason that ebook solely included teenager POVs. Whereas initially, the clumsy investigation looks like a solution to the inevitable query, “How have the youngsters gotten away with enjoying Panic yearly?” it turns into extra convoluted because the sequence continues, threading in a number of previous gamers and townspeople who don’t have any involvement with the present sport. Additionally, other than one bust early on, the cops appear much less involved with stopping the video games than they’re with studying the identities of the judges and organizers, to pin the deaths on them. The investigation is extra of a second plot than a subplot, to the purpose that it distracts from the principle characters and the present yr’s sport.

Photograph: Matt Lankes/Amazon Studios

Along with on a regular basis spent on the sheriff division’s investigation, the present additionally consists of extra scenes from the angle of the gamers’ mother and father. A few of these newly added characters assist increase their children’ motivation and backstory, comparable to Heather’s investigative abilities discovered from her cop father, and Bishop’s shaky relationship along with his demanding decide father. Heather’s mom, Sherri (God Friended Me’s Rachel Bay Jones), is given a way more sympathetic leaning than she had within the ebook, making the connection between her and Heather extra fascinating to look at because it falls aside.

Panic is an entertaining present for thrill-seekers who would watch a real-life model of the sport, which makes it a disgrace that the present doesn’t focus sufficient on the sport itself. They turn out to be secondary issues because the present unfolds, greater than afterthoughts, however lower than the principle occasion. Whereas the most recent sport of Panic may not have been sufficient to fill a 10-episode present, it’s value questioning what the present would have been if it had dug additional into the sport’s machinations, or on the youngsters’ subplots and characterization. In spite of everything, the purpose of Panic is to problem the children, not the adults.

All 10 episodes of Panic are now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.