The Number One Thriller on Netflix Right Now is Truly … Unhinged
There were a lot of really fantastic horror movies released in 2020 that were easily missed. With the COVID-19 pandemic shuttering most theaters, studios and distributors had slates full of movies they needed to do something with. Some, like David Prior’s The Empty Man, were unceremoniously (and contractually) dumped in theaters, while others like Natalie Erika James’ Relic found success on video on demand. You can check out a full recap of the year here. Of note, however, is another theatrical release like The Empty Man that was missed in 2020 but has since found major success on streaming. Derrick Borte’s Unhinged is currently the most-watched thriller on Netflix.
Per Netflix: After a traffic dispute, a single mom must defend herself against a sadistic driver who’s hellbent on turning her commute into a ride laced with terror.
Unhinged was an unfortunate casualty of shuttered multiplexes because it earnestly is one of the strongest adult thrillers released this decade. Russell Crowe is in full The Pope’s Exorcist mode, hamming it up with genre convention as the pissed-off driver hellbent on revenge. It’s a ludicrous performance, but it works, with Crowe easily conceptualizing the worst-case road rage scenario.
In fact, I revisited Unhinged last year, hoping to get the brutal thriller on more peoples’ radar. At the time, I wrote, “While not a classic by any means, Unhinged is the kind of mean-spirited thriller we don’t get enough of nowadays. It’s handsomely filmed, plenty nasty, and even acts as an origin for the kind of late-game Russell Crowe I can’t get enough of these days.”
Unhinged goes to some truly unhinged places, and for fans of lean, mean adult thrillers, it rarely gets better. What’s all the more remarkable is to see the resurgence of interest four years after the film was dumped and then forgotten. Reasonably, nobody was (or should have been) going to the theater in August 2020 to see the film, though now that Unhinged is available to stream, it’s the perfect time to catch up on one of the decade’s fiercest hidden gems. If nothing else, it’ll make you think twice before you honk at the car in front of you.
What do you think? Do you have any plans to revisit Unhinged now that it has topped the Netflix charts? Let me know over on Twitter @Chadiscollins, and while you’re there, let me know what else you’ve been watching!
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