The advent and unstoppable rise of streaming services has completely revolutionized the way people consume movies and TV shows, and there’s now so much competition that very few of us are either willing or in a financial position to subscribe to them all, leading to some intense negotiations in households around the world.
Not only are a huge number of the industry’s most high-profile names heading to streaming to either create or star in big budget projects where they get a level of creative control that the major Hollywood studios would be unwilling to hand over, but being available at the push of a button has also seen a huge number of underrated classics and hidden gems find a second life and a whole new fanbase.
Critical and commercial bombs are now frequently finding themselves reappraised and re-evaluated once they become accessible to the masses, and the forgotten Johnny Depp thriller The Ninth Gate could be next when it lands on Hulu in July. Directed by the always controversial Roman Polanski, the movie quickly sank without a trace and vanished from memory when it first hit theaters in 1999.
It might have earned just $58 million globally against a production budget of $38 million and scored a middling Rotten Tomatoes score of 43%, but The Ninth Gate is well worth a watch for those who prefer their mystery thrillers to involve more than a hint of the supernatural. In it, Johnny Depp plays a rare book collector who ends up caught in a conspiracy to summon the devil himself, and there are some big ideas and themes being thrown around in the script, even if not all of them manage to land successfully. Still, there are far worse ways to pass a couple of hours than checking it out and you’d be wise to give it a watch when it hits Hulu on July 1st.