Netflix has undoubtedly started the 2024 streaming season with a bang!
All the new January releases have been full of surprises, and it just got better with the release of ‘Lift,’ a heist comedy film directed by F. Gary Gray, and ‘American Nightmare,’ a true crime series directed by Bernadette Higgins and Felicity Morris. Both the newly released film and television series have become a major topic of discussion among subscribers, as the compelling themes of these certainly deserve all the praise for being the talk of the town, which is pretty evident in the growing viewership numbers along with the overall critical reception.
It’s been two weeks since “Lift” was released and it has managed to secure the top spot on Netflix’s English Film Chart from January 15 to January 21, 2024. As of writing this, the total views accumulated by the film after being in the Top 10 in 93 countries include 36,700,000 views, for a total of 65,400,000 hours viewed. The second spot went to The Legend of Tarzan with 7,900,000 views and 14,400,000 hours viewed, and the third place was secured by The Kitchen, which has 5,600,000 views and a total of 10,200,000 hours viewed.
Check out the completed list below:
‘Lift’ premiered on Netflix on January 12, 2024
The film follows an international heist crew, led by Cyrus Whitaker (Kevin Hart), racing to lift $500 million in gold from a passenger plane at 40,000 feet. The cast includes Kevin Hart as Cyrus (who also served as a producer), Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Abby, Vincent D’Onofrio as Denton, Úrsula Corberó as Camila, Billy Magnussen as Magnus, Jacob Batalon as N8 (an NFT artist), Jean Reno as Jorgenson, and Sam Worthington as Huxley among others.
Overall Reception: Despite having great viewership, the overall reception from viewers and critics has been somewhat flat. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 29% of 62 critics’ reviews are positive, with an average rating of 4.6/10. Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 40 out of 100 based on 21 critics, indicating “mixed or average” reviews.
‘American Nightmare’ covers a harrowing home invasion and kidnapping in 2015 as a couple is accused of staging the ordeal when the woman reappears in this true-crime documentary. Part one is titled “The Boyfriend,” and the second part is titled “Gone Girl.” The final episode is called “The Others.” After a whole week of all three episodes being available to stream, the true crime series has managed to climb up Netflix’s Top 10 English TV charts.
As of writing this, it has a total of 21,400,000 views, with an average of 48,100,000 total hours viewed. The second spot was taken by the limited series, Fool Me Once, which has been on the chart for its third week with 11,200,000 viewers for a total of 71,700,000 hours. The third spot went to another limited series, Boy Swallows Universe, which has 4,000,000 views with 27,200,000 total hours viewed by being on the chart for two weeks.
Check out the completed list below:
‘American Nightmare’ was released on Netflix on January 17, 2024
The three-part series covers the March 2015 kidnapping of Denise Huskins from the home she shared with her boyfriend Aaron Quinn in Vallejo, California. The Vallejo police department and the FBI assumed the kidnapping was a hoax staged by Huskins and Quinn, and Huskins was labeled “The real Gone Girl” by the media. The couple are eventually vindicated when a detective connects another home invasion in Dublin, California, to Huskins’ kidnapping, leading to the arrest and conviction of Matthew Muller.
Overall Reception: On Rotten Tomatoes, the series has an approval rating of 93% based on 14 reviews and an average rating of 7.7/10. Metacritic assigned a score of 76 out of 100 based on 21 critics, indicating “generally favorable” reviews based on 8 critic reviews.
