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Prime Video Quietly Delivered One of TV’s Best Stephen King-Style Thrillers in Just 2 Seasons

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With over 60 books published over the years, Stephen King has established himself as one of the most prolific and beloved horror authors of all-time. And as his novels continue to be adapted to the big and small screens, including new titles like The Long Walk and IT: Welcome to Derry, more TV shows have been popping up that instill in the viewers the same sense of eerie dread and imminent danger. Among them is Prime Video’s 2022 series The Devil’s Hour, which is, undoubtedly, one of the best King-like thrillers on streaming to date.

First premiered on October 28, 2022, The Devil’s Hour has become one of Prime Video’s most underrated gems. The series, which released its second season in October 2024, has earned a flawless 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics praising how the series grips viewers from the very beginning, is filled with incredible performances, and delivers on a suspenseful, binge worthy plot. It’s a true hidden gem, and the perfect watch for fans of Stephen King.

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What Is ‘The Devil’s Hour’ About?

The Devil’s Hour begins with Lucy Chambers (Jessica Raine), a social worker who finds herself waking up every night at exactly 3:33 a.m. plagued by unsettling visions she can’t explain. As she struggles to care for her withdrawn son, Isaac (Benjamin Chivers), whose mysterious behavior and “imaginary friends” seem increasingly sinister, Lucy finds herself drawn into a chilling serial murder investigation centered on the spine-chilling Gideon Shepherd (Peter Capaldi). Meanwhile, Detective Ravi Dhillon (Nikesh Patel) is investigating the murders while grappling with his own unnerving sense of déjà vu. Flash-forwards to Lucy’s cryptic conversations with a handcuffed Gideon hint that their lives are connected in ways that won’t become clear until later. What begins as a gripping crime thriller gradually unfolds into a mind-bending mystery about memory, fate, alternate lives, and the possibility that some people have lived far more than one lifetime.

By Season 2, which picks up after Lucy’s near-death experience, she’s haunted by vivid memories of a life she never knew she’d lived. Newly single and raising Isaac on her own, she discovers she struck a bargain with Gideon to save her mother in exchange for helping prevent a devastating catastrophe. With time, they form an uneasy alliance while becoming the target of dangerous forces determined to stop them. As the threats worsen, Isaac’s unsettling abilities continue to evolve, pulling the family even deeper into the show’s increasingly complex web of timelines, destiny, and second chances.



















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Collider Exclusive · Horror Survival Quiz
Which Horror Villain Do You Have the Best Chance of Surviving?
Jason Voorhees · Michael Myers · Freddy Krueger · Pennywise · Chucky

Five killers. Five completely different ways to die — if you’re not smart enough, fast enough, or self-aware enough to avoid it. Only one of them is the villain your particular set of instincts gives you a fighting chance against. Eight questions will figure out which one.

🏕️Jason

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🔪Michael

💤Freddy

🎈Pennywise

🪆Chucky

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01

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Something feels wrong. You can’t explain it — you just know. What do you do?
First instincts are the difference between the survivor and the first act casualty.





02

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Where are you most likely to find yourself when things go wrong?
Setting is everything in horror. Where you are determines which rules apply.





03

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What is your most reliable survival asset?
Every survivor has a quality the villain didn’t account for. What’s yours?





04

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What kind of fear is hardest for you to fight through?
Knowing your weakness is the first step to not dying because of it.





05

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You’re with a group when things start going wrong. What’s your role?
Horror movies are brutally clear about who survives group situations and who doesn’t.





06

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What’s the horror movie mistake you’re most likely to make?
Honest self-assessment is a survival skill. Denial is not.





07

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What’s your best weapon against something that can’t be stopped by conventional means?
Every horror villain has a weakness. The survivors are always the ones who find it.





08

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It’s the final scene. You’re the last one standing. How did you make it?
The final survivor always has a reason. What’s yours?





Your Survival Odds Have Been Calculated
Your Best Chance Is Against…
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Your instincts, your strengths, and your particular way of thinking under pressure point to one villain you actually have a fighting chance against. Everyone else — good luck.


Camp Crystal Lake · Friday the 13th

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Jason Voorhees

Jason is relentless, but he is also predictable — and that is the gap you would exploit.

  • He moves in straight lines toward his target. He doesn’t strategise, doesn’t adapt, doesn’t outsmart. He simply pursues.
  • Your ability to keep moving, use the environment, and resist the panic that freezes most victims gives you a genuine edge.
  • The Crystal Lake survivors were always the ones who stopped running in circles and started thinking about terrain, water, and distance.
  • You think like that. Which means Jason, for all his indestructibility, would face someone who simply refused to be where he expected.


Haddonfield, Illinois · Halloween

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Michael Myers

Michael watches before he moves. He is patient, methodical, and almost impossible to detect — until it’s too late for anyone who isn’t paying close enough attention.

  • But you are paying attention. You notice the shape in the window, the car parked slightly wrong, the silence where there should be sound.
  • Michael’s power lies in the invisibility of ordinary suburbia — the fact that nothing ever looks wrong until it already is.
  • Your spatial awareness and instinct to map every room, every exit, and every shadow before you need them is precisely the quality Laurie Strode had.
  • You are not a victim waiting to happen. You are someone who already suspects something is wrong — and acts on it.


Elm Street · A Nightmare on Elm Street

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Freddy Krueger

Freddy wins by getting inside your head — using your own fears, your own memories, your own subconscious as weapons against you. That strategy requires a target who can be destabilised.

  • You are harder to destabilise than most. You’ve faced uncomfortable truths about yourself and you haven’t looked away.
  • The survivors on Elm Street were always the ones who understood what was happening and chose to face it rather than flee from it.
  • Freddy’s greatest weakness is that his power evaporates in the presence of someone who refuses to give him the fear he feeds on.
  • Your psychological resilience — the ability to stay grounded when reality itself becomes unreliable — is exactly the quality that keeps you alive here.


Derry, Maine · It

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Pennywise

Pennywise is ancient, shapeshifting, and feeds on terror — but it has one critical vulnerability: it cannot function against someone who genuinely stops being afraid of it.

  • The Losers Club didn’t survive because they were braver than everyone else. They survived because they faced their fears together, and faced them honestly.
  • You ask the questions others avoid. You look directly at what frightens you rather than turning away.
  • That directness — the refusal to let fear fester in the dark — is Pennywise’s worst nightmare.
  • It chose the wrong target when it chose you. You are exactly the kind of person whose fear tastes like nothing at all.


Chicago · Child’s Play

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Chucky

Chucky’s greatest advantage is that nobody takes him seriously until it’s already too late. He exploits the gap between how something looks and what it actually is.

  • You don’t have that gap. You take threats seriously regardless of how they present — and you never make the mistake of underestimating something because of its size or appearance.
  • Chucky relies on surprise, on the delay between recognition and response. You close that delay faster than almost anyone.
  • Your instinct to treat every unfamiliar thing with appropriate scepticism — rather than dismissing it because it seems absurd — is the exact quality that keeps you breathing.
  • Against Chucky, not laughing is already winning. You are very good at not laughing.

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‘The Devil’s Hour’ Is the Perfect Stephen King Replacement

If you’re a fan of Stephen King and have already read through his books and seen all the shows he’s inspired, look no further than The Devil’s Hour. After all, while Lucy isn’t stuck in a remote alpine hotel like the Torrance family in The Shining, the miniseries evokes a similar King-like claustrophobic feeling of not being able to escape her own destiny. Plus, with Isaac’s unsettling powers becoming an ever-growing presence in the series, the show echoes a few of King’s characters, like Danny Torrance in The Shining and Luke Ellis in The Institute, where the younger generations become more perceptive to supernatural beings and occurrences than their elders.

Most importantly, like any good King book, The Devil’s Hour has a fantastic villain in Capaldi’s Gideon. Prioritizing psychological horror over gore, Gideon pulls viewers into the story and instills in them a sense of dread and doom in each scene. “Gideon is less like your bog-standard criminal and more like some unknowable, cosmic enigma, imbued with a kind of mystery only Capaldi could pull off,” wrote Maggie Boccella in her review for Collider. “He’s the piece that hooks you anyway, especially now that the show’s let Gideon out of his (literal and metaphorical) chains and given him space to experiment.”

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Therefore, while The Devil’s Hour has yet to receive the viewership and worldwide attention it deserves, the series is a captivating thriller. By selling itself as a British crime drama but soon expanding into an emotionally driven supernatural thriller about fate, memory, and the lives we might have lived, the two-season series is a force to be reckoned with, as well as a must-watch for Stephen King fans out there.


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Release Date
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October 28, 2022

Directors

Johnny Allan, Isabelle Sieb, Shaun James Grant

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Writers

Tom Moran

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  • Jessica Raine

    Lucy Chambers

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  • Nikesh Patel

    DI Ravi Dhillon

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  • Benjamin Chivers

    Isaac Stephens

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