Based on Lauren Oliver’s eponymous 2014 novel, the drama follows a bunch of teenagers take part in a set of risky challenges to get out of their nowhere town
CHENNAI: Amazon Prime’s yawn-inducingly long 10-episode “Panic” based on a young adult novel by Lauren Oliver, who doubles up as the series writer begins on a dramatic note with teenager Heather Nill (Olivia Welch) jumping off a cliff into gurgling waters to score points in a game aptly titled Panic. She is desperate to win the $50,000 prize money, but this death-defying
Author Lauren Oliver adapts her own YA novel Panic for a 10-episode Amazon series, which has teenagers competing in deadly dares built around their deepest fears, in hopes of winning a cash prize. The teens’ story arc is compelling, but to widen the show, Oliver added a police-procedural subplot and many adult characters, which dilute the danger, romance, and action. Streaming on Amazon Prime Video now.
The Wilds, while
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Amazon’s latest teen adventure series,
Panic, succeeds through the twists of the game and the strength of Olivia Welch’s multifaceted portrayal of Heather, our protagonist who’s both dream girl and tomboy. Based on Lauren Oliver’s YA novel and developed by the author,
Panic is so named for an underground game that takes place in the unappealing hamlet of Carp, Texas, which even the area’s well-off residents are dying to escape. And winning the game of Panic may be the ticket: Every summer, the graduating high school seniors get a chance to compete, which involves a lot of trumped-up yet terrifying dares, like crossing a highway blindfolded, being buried alive in a coffin, or spending the night in an abandoned, reportedly haunted house. It’s not every fictional series that has a “don’t try this at home” disclaimer attached.
The stakes for the characters in Panic are sky high â literally life and death, as in a second episode challenge where contestants traverse a rickety steel beam between two grain towers stories above a crowd of their peers. But Panicâs 45-minute episodes, also written by Oliver, barely lift above a dramatic flatline. The series leans heavily on teen adrenaline but offers frustratingly few clues as to why itâs applied to Panic, whoâs coercing them, or why no one simply spills the beans. High-schoolers gather each summer to watch their friends skirt death by inches for ⦠what, exactly? Itâs a zombie of a series â all the parts of a dystopian-adjacent, horny teen YA thriller without a heartbeat of central mystery.