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Netflix has been dominated by Christmas movies throughout November, with viewers heading straight from Halloween horror into festive favorites. As well as watching new holiday films like Christmas on the Square, Holidate and Jingle Jangle, they have also been watching nostalgic favorites like The Grinch.
The Netflix movie charts, however, were not all Christmassy, also inexplicably popular all of a sudden was a previously forgotten 2015 Keanu Reeves movie and a 2012 tsunami film.
The top 10 most-watched movies on Netflix in November
10. Over the Moon
Highest position: 4
Days on chart: 19
The ninth most-watched movie on Netflix last month, this American retelling of a classical Chinese tale of a moon goddess has remained popular in November—arguably as popular as Mulan, which does a similar job with Chinese myth, but unlike this film got rid of all the charming talking animals.
9. Operation Christmas Drop
Highest position: 1
Days on chart: 11
Perhaps the first film to be at the center of the venn diagram of Christmas movies and military propaganda, Operation Christmas Drop tells the story of a real humanitarian mission where the air force drops care packages onto the island of Guam. Except the real mission probably doesn't also involve a blossoming love between a Scrooge-like congressional assistant and a studly captain.
8. How the Grinch Stole Christmas
Highest position: 5
Days on chart: 18
The first of two Grinch movies on the most-watched Netflix movies list this month, this is the 2001 Jim Carrey version whose horrifying prosthetics for some reason do not stop it getting people into the Christmas spirit.
7. Knock Knock
Highest position: 1
Days on chart: 16
Sometimes, the Netflix charts (especially the movies one) seem to have no rhyme or reason. So it is with the sudden success of Knock Knock, a 2015 horror that was a minor success with audiences at the time but was slammed by many critics. Why it has suddenly emerged was a mystery. Did viewers who could not make it to the cinemas to see Bill and Ted 3 make up for it by watching another movie starring Keanu "the internet's boyfriend" Reeves? Did Bond fans deal with the latest release date delay by checking out another Ana de Armas movie? We may never know.
6. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
Highest position: 1
Days on chart: 13
Thanksgiving is a time where many can empathize with a man being terrorized by a constant barrage of food, so it is no surprise that families have been watching the charming 2009 animated movie where future Lego Movie directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller made their playful debut.
5. Jingle Jangle
Highest position: 1
Days on chart: 16
Nope, not a movie about the drug that terrorised the students of Riverdale a few seasons back; Jingle Jangle is a new Netflix original Christmas movie about a toymaker called Jeronicus Jangle (yes, really) that has been a hit with both audiences and critics who were looking for an explosion of joy.
4. The Impossible
Highest position: 1
Days on chart: 14
Another movie that got a second life on Netflix this month was The Impossible, a 2012 disaster movie about the 2004 tsunami in Thailand starring Naomi Watts (Oscar-nominated for her role), Ewan McGregor and a very young Tom Holland. Again, why the movie has suddenly had a spike in interest is hard to work out, but maybe people needed to watch a film where things feel worse than they do now in real life.
3. Mile 22
Highest position: 2
Days on chart: 17
Mark Wahlberg (like Adam Sandler) is very much a patron saint of the Netflix movie charts, with his movies always turning up in the daily charts. The latest to make that milestone is Mile 22, which stars Marky Mark (sans Funky Bunch) as the leader of a CIA task force fighting the government to move an asset 22 miles. The film was hated by critics when released in 2018—but if these monthly lists teach us anything is that has not deterred millions from checking out a film on Netflix.
2. Holidate
Highest position: 1
Days on chart: 23
The latest Netflix rom-com that feels like it might have been designed by a computer algorithm, the movies sees Luke Bracey and Emma Roberts as a pair of singletons who pretend to be each other's "holidates" to avoid family questions and, wouldn't you know it, start to feel feelings for each other. Pure generic romantic cheese...but when has that stopped a film from being a big Netflix smash?
1. The Grinch
Highest position: 2
Days on chart: 29
In the unofficial Battle of the Grinches on Netflix this November, it is the Benedict Cumberbatch 2018 animated version that has emerged victorious. That may be due to the fact that it came out more recently, or simply because it isn't as visually disturbing as the Carrey version. Either way, it has been making viewers' hearts swell several sizes for a whole month.
