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Netflix started streaming many movies in September to keep viewers tuned in. Whether female assassins, party girls returning from the dead or singing kinkajous are more your thing, the platform aimed to please.
As well as new originals like Worth, Prey and Kate, the streamer also re-released some forgotten films from the '00s that have now become hits again. In fact, if you are an obscure Ryan Reynolds movie from the last 15 years, you probably had a good month as the below list will show.
Here's what people were watching on Netflix this month, and which movie was the most popular addition to the streamer's charts.
The 10 most popular films on Netflix this month:
10. Prey
Netflix continues its interest in schlocky European thrillers with German movie Prey, which sees five friends head to the woods for a hiking trip – before having to go on the run from a sniper. Decider called it, "Deliverance minus the forced sodomy, crossed with the tamest version of Bachelor Party ever conceived."
9. Wind River
Yellowstone Season 4 may not be coming out until November, but Netflix is offering fans the chance to see creator Taylor Sheridan's reservation crime drama Wind River now. Starring Hawkeye's Jeremy Renner and Wandavision's Elizabeth Olsen, the gritty, grisly movie is miles away from their work in the MCU.
8. Green Lantern
Green Lantern was once considered a rough spot in Ryan Reynolds career (he ever jokes about how bad it is in Deadpool 2) and in the DC film catalog. However, with the Canadian actor celebrating another box office success with Free Guy, even his least loved projects are getting a second life on streaming.
7. Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins
Netflix has been doing stellar work getting a generation of Black comedy from the '90s and '00s onto its service. Months after Moesha and Sister, Sister joined the streamer, Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins was added. The 2008 comedy has an all-star Black cast that sees Martin Lawrence's talk show host return to his Southern home for his parents' 50th wedding anniversary.
6. Worth
The 20th anniversary of 9/11 saw multiple streamers release new documentaries about the Twin Towers attacks, but Netflix was one of the few that released a new fiction film about the events. That movie was Worth, and manages to pull compelling drama out of the process of working out how much compensation victims and their families were entitled to.
5. An Unfinished Life
Many a box office flop has received a second life on Netflix. The latest to do so is An Unfinished Life, a 2005 Robert Redford and Jennifer Lopez movie that sees the former play a grizzled rancher whose troubled daughter-in-law suddenly asks to stay with him.
4. Safe House
Safe House is exactly the kind of generic title that is given to many of the thrillers that often clog up the Netflix Top 10 movie list. This 2012 movie, however, is a slightly classier joint than that, with Denzel Washington as a possible CIA double agent and Ryan Reynolds (again) as the agent tracking him down.
3. Afterlife of the Party
Netflix is building itself a stable of bland, likeable young stars. Some are ex-Disney or Nickelodeon stars (like Zoey 101's Victoria Justice), while other are home-grown (like Dash and Lily star Midori Francis). All of them, however, star in light high school comedy dramas like Afterlife of the Part, which stars Francis as a school misfit, and Justice as the dead friend tasked with helping her from beyond the grave.
2. Vivo
While other streaming services are relying on endless sequels and/or reboots of their existing intellectual property for their views (looking at you, Disney+), Netflix is still sometimes in the business of attracting big-name talent with (presumably big pay checks). The result is movies like Vivo, an animated comedy that Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda has been trying to get made for over a decade now, in its second month on the Netflix charts.
1. Kate
Female assassin movies are becoming their own small but significant micro-genre for Netflix. In the year after the Jessica Chastain-starring Ava and a few months after Karen Gillan served us a Gunpowder Milkshake, viewers got to meet Kate, an ass-kicking killer played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead. And with this film having the best run on the U.S. Netflix charts this month, expect plenty more female actors to pick up a pair of nunchucks and/or a sniper rifle in the coming years.
