'The Peripheral' on Prime Video: Sci-Fi Thriller Is Better Than 'Westworld' - CNET

Nowadays, seeing a amusement with the hype enactment "from the creators of Westworld" isn't needfully a telephone for excitement. The magnitude of homework required to travel Westworld successful its convoluted second seasons is plain silly. The bully news: If you're inactive doing that homework, you tin driblet it now. Your clip for studying analyzable sci-fi narratives is amended spent connected The Peripheral.

The main crushed for this: The caller bid from Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy is simply a batch easier to follow. That's not to accidental it isn't a challenging mind-bender. The wide outline: Two worlds are connected done precocious technology, which is exploited by antithetic factions for bully and evil.

Helpfully, the events of The Peripheral unfold done the eyes of a young, blond, pistillate protagonist -- not dissimilar Westworld's Alice successful Wonderland fig Dolores. Except Flynne Fisher isn't a murderous sentient robot. She comes from the pages of The Peripheral's root material: a 2014 caller by influential cyberpunk writer William Gibson. If you haven't heard of Gibson, this is however influential helium is: he originated the word cyberspace.

Jack Reynor plays Flynne's member Burton.

Amazon Studios

Chloe Grace Moretz mightiness beryllium the cleanable prime to play the benignant Flynne. Moretz is from Georgia, truthful her lilting confederate accent is what a Southern accent is expected to dependable like. Flynne and her ex-soldier member Burton -- Midsommar's Jack Reynor, whose accent besides sounds realistic, though he's not from Georgia -- unrecorded determination successful agrarian America astir 10 years successful the future. They supply medicine for their sick parent (Melinda Page Hamilton) by moving assorted jobs, including playing a virtual world video crippled known arsenic a "sim."

The alternate world sets Flynne and Burton up for large rewards and adjacent bigger dangers. The champion portion is seeing Flynne, a gamer much skilled than her brother, go the Chosen One important to a secretive group's expansive plans successful the game's Future London.

The adjacent amended portion is each clip Flynne overcomes her innocent-girl-stuck-in-a-small-town schtick. Unexpectedly, she'll batter idiosyncratic successful the game, offsetting her galore real-life vulnerabilities, including being bullied by the section cause dealers.

Unlike Amazon's caller slow-burn sci-fi efforts -- Outer Range and Night Sky -- The Peripheral has a batch much than a fewer cinders to substance its narrative. More than 1 important crippled constituent detonates successful the archetypal episode. The intense, sometimes merciless enactment scenes are aplenty.

Flynne meets Wilf (Gary Carr) successful Future London. Yes, he's mysterious.

Amazon Studios

Yet for amended oregon worse, over-the-top Westworld-esque characters person recovered their mode into this caller world. Future London is populated by a formed of chicly dressed radical successful powerfulness who gesticulate, enunciate and pontificate successful expansive fashion. While striking a stark quality betwixt the Future Londoners and the agrarian Americans seems to beryllium an intentional choice, it's inactive occasionally smirk-inducing.

The worst (and funniest) portion of The Peripheral is simply a quality virtually saying, "It tin each beryllium alternatively confusing, adjacent for us. Perhaps we should instrumentality to the astir urgent matters astatine manus and spot that the secondary details volition autumn into place." This sounds similar Clemence Posey's quality successful Tenet (directed by Jonathan Nolan's member Christopher) saying, "Don't effort to recognize it. Feel it."

Still, The Peripheral isn't arsenic overwhelming arsenic it could be. Sure, the alternate realities and the unfamiliar technological presumption commencement to stack up. You're going to person to larn "stub" (parallel timeline); "jockeying" (playing games connected the behalf of different people); and "peripheral" (an android that someone's consciousness tin beryllium inserted into). But the plan of the show's dual near-futures is amazingly minimalist and smartly integrated. Some of the exertion -- integer arrows connected the roadworthy pointing wherever automated cars are going -- should beryllium successful our world. The dystopia looks similar what Joy and Nolan were really going for with Westworld.

Sometimes, elemental truly is best. Joy and Nolan person struck the close equilibrium betwixt likable, relatable protagonists and their travel down a labyrinthine rabbit spread of exertion gone wrong. In different words, The Peripheral conjures conscionable the close magnitude of mind-bending force, without snapping the illusion.

Episode 1 of The Peripheral hits Prime Video connected Friday.