Simone Ashley's Underrated 2025 Thriller On Prime Video Is Based On A True Story

There have been plenty of underrated movies in 2026, but many of them — such as the fun adventure "Masters of the Universe" — were at least given high-profile theatrical releases. Psychological thriller "This Tempting Madness," which stars British actor Simone Ashley, on the other hand, had an extremely modest theatrical release after premiering on the festival circuit in 2025. It can now be found hiding away on Prime Video, where it's well worth seeking out.

"This Tempting Madness" marks the feature directorial debut of Jennifer E. Montgomery, who co-wrote the script with her husband Andrew Davis and based the story on the real experience of a close friend. As the director told The Fan Carpet, her friend suffered a violent fall and struggled to regain even short-term memory in the aftermath. Montgomery encouraged her to keep a journal, which she did for a full year. "When she was fully recovered, she came to me one day and said, 'So, are you going to write something?,'" Montgomery remembered. "I was completely blown away. I didn't expect her ever to come around to that. I asked, 'Do you want me to write something?' She said, 'I think it could be good. I think you should.'" So, that's exactly what the director did, teaming up with her husband to write what eventually became "This Tempting Madness."

The film follows a young woman who awakens from a coma with major injuries and a fractured memory. As she tries to piece together her past, she begins to question her ability to distinguish reality and fantasy. But as Montgomery explained during a Reddit Q&A, the movie was designed with catharsis in mind. "Sometimes in life there are no clear endings," she wrote. "The film gives a clear ending and definite catharsis in a way life rarely does."

Simone Ashley is best known for playing Olivia Hanan on Netflix's "Sex Education" and Kate Bridgerton on "Bridgerton." But she's also appeared in Disney's live-action "The Little Mermaid" and "The Devil Wears Prada 2." In "This Tempting Madness" she stars as Mia Williams, a woman who wakes up after falling several stories from an airport building. Severely injured and struggling to remember what happened, Mia learns that her husband, Jake (Austin Stowell) has been arrested for pushing her over the edge of the building. But she's unable to say for sure whether he is, in fact, the one responsible. Complicating matters is her brother Ajay (Suraj Sharma), who encourages her to cut ties with Jake completely and leave him to the legal system. Soon, Mia finds herself questioning everything and everyone, including herself.

"This Tempting Madness" did get a very limited theatrical release at the same time it hit video on demand services in June 2026. But it didn't make much of an impact. In fact, there are no box office figures available. Instead, at some point, the movie quietly shuffled its way onto Prime Video and is now available to subscribers at no extra cost.

It's well worth a look, though. "This Tempting Madness" might not be one of the greatest psychological thrillers of all time, but it has plenty of fans on Letterboxd and a healthy 79% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes. In his three-star review, Phil Hoad of The Guardian called the film a "capable psychological thriller," praising Montgomery for bringing "visual poise to a pleasingly potboilerish wallow in toxic co-dependency." No doubt, Ashley is destined for even more success, so why not check out one of her best performances to date on Prime Video?