Netflix spends a considerable amount of time and money working on and developing algorithms to help viewers find exactly what they’re looking for and to discover films/TV shows that are well suited to their interests. But ever since they rolled out their Top 10 Movies list feature, we’ve been seeing some rather odd titles popping up on there from time to time. Like 2011 horror pic Priest, which currently holds the #9 spot on the aforementioned list.
Yes, this forgotten and, quite frankly, not very good horror flick is, at the time of writing, the 9th most popular movie on the streaming site. But why, and what could possibly be accounting for this surprising addition to the top 10 list? One which also has big titles like The Help, Uncut Gems and Despicable Me.
Well, first and foremost, Priest just hit Netflix yesterday, June 1st, and as we’ve seen in the past, new films usually get a boost in popularity within the first 24-48 hours of arriving on the platform, with fresh arrivals finding themselves promoted a bit more heavily.
But still, June 1st brought with it a ton of new movies. Almost 30, in fact, and a lot of them are pretty high profile and widely loved (The Silence of the Lambs, V For Vendetta, Inside Man, etc.) So why, then, has this rather dull and derivative flick found itself with a surprisingly big audience? Honestly, who knows?
A 15% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes coupled with a 46% audience score would have you believe that most people didn’t care for Priest, but somehow, it’s managed to find itself with a lot of eyeballs on it today. Not to mention that it’s very possible that it’ll continue to climb up the Netflix Top 10 Movies list.
After all, the next few days don’t have a ton of new content coming and we wouldn’t be surprised to find more and more people checking out Priest as the week continues. Especially since they’re now seeing it pop up on the aforementioned list.