Ben Affleck's Animals Has Been Netflix's Number One Film for Three Weeks, and the Critics Still Do Not Like It

Photo: Bamsb900, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Animals arrived on Netflix on October 9 and has held the top spot on the English-language film chart for three weeks. It pulled 10.7 million views in the week of October 19, which brings its running total to 65.3 million, after 23.8 million in its first week and 30.8 million in its second.

Photo: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Ben Affleck directed it, co-wrote it with Connor McIntyre and Billy Ray, and stars in it, with Kerry Washington, Steven Yeun and Gillian Anderson alongside him. The critics are not impressed, with a 32 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes and an audience score of 41 percent. Even the runtime is up for dispute, since I found 106, 108 and 116 minutes in different places.

Photo: Max Surprenant, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The numbers still say something about Netflix. A crime thriller with a famous director and a decent cast gets watched in huge numbers whatever the reviews say, though its opening trailed Affleck's earlier Netflix film The Rip, which started with 41.6 million views. The viewing is real. The question is whether anyone is still talking about it in a month.

Photo: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

I try not to pile on a film people clearly enjoy, and I also try not to pretend a 32 percent critics score means nothing. A thriller that lots of people watch and few defend is a strangely common modern genre, a film that exists as a streak on a chart rather than a conversation.

Photo: Martin Kraft, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Have you watched it, and did you finish it?