An Indian Action Revenge Film Is Ripping Its Way Through The Netflix Top Ten

One of the benefits of Netflix and the streaming age in general is that audiences are being exposed to films and TV series from outside their own cultures. Last year, the Mexican limited series "Thursday's Widows" hit the Netflix top 10 in several countries, becoming the number three non-English TV series for the week of September 11 to September 17, 2023. But it was the Indian thriller "Jaane Jaan," which topped the Netflix charts worldwide back in September 2023, that had perhaps the most impressive Netflix run for a non-US film.

Becoming the most-watched non-English film on the streamer globally, with 8.1 million views for the week of September 18 to September 24, 2023, "Jaane Jaan" proved global Netflix viewers were not only willing to give films outside their own countries a go, but that these films could dominate viewing charts.

Now, in 2024, we've got yet another Indian Netflix hit that hasn't quite managed to ascend to the heights of "Jaane Jaan" but has still managed a decent run on the streamer. Action drama "Animal" debuted in theaters on December 1, 2023, and became a box office smash in its native India, though critics were fairly merciless. But a poor critical response hasn't stopped "Animal" from once again proving itself popular among audiences with an impressive Netflix debut.

"Animal" is an Indian Hindi-language film from director Sandeep Reddy Vanga, whose previous two movies, 2017's "Arjun Reddy" and 2019's "Kabir Singh" (2019), were hugely successful at the Indian box office. As was "Animal," which tells the story of a man who embarks on a brutal revenge mission after an assassination attempt on his estranged father. But this Bollywood blockbuster is notable for the sheer level of unrelenting brutality meted out by its protagonist, played by Ranbir Kapoor in a role that the Guardian called "one of the vilest protagonists in cinema history."

Still, that hasn't stopped Netflixers from outright lapping up this Indian actioner. According to streaming data aggregator FlixPatrol, "Animal" arrived on Netflix on January 26, 2024, and almost immediately hit the top 10 charts in 25 countries around the world. As of January 27, the film had hit the Netflix top 10 in all but two of those countries, and as of January 30, is number one in nine of those markets. More impressive still, "Animal" has been number one in six of those countries since it debuted on the service, including in Oman, the United Arab Emirates, and its native India.

But the film has also managed to court viewers in a handful of western countries, including New Zealand where it currently sits at number five on the Netflix top 10, and the United Kingdom, where it's currently at number seven after having slipped from the number five spot. It should be noted that Netflix viewing metrics aren't the most transparent, and the Top 10 website was basically launched to distract from that fact. But there's no denying audiences are clearly quite taken by "Animal" and its more than 3 hours of non-stop bloodshed.

So, does all this Netflix success mean you should join the streaming hordes and check out "Animal"? Well, that depends on whether you're open to potentially being upset by the film's content, which seems to have irked critics. Reviewers remain pretty much unanimous in their view of the movie as hollow and, to quote the Guardian's Phuong Le, "regressive" in its insistence on continuing what the critic sees as director Sandeep Reddy Vanga's penchant for celebrating "misogynistic, violent men." All of this has, according to the Indian Express, made "Animal" one of "the most discussed films of recent times." So, if you want to join that discussion, the movie is available right now, including in the US, where so far it's failed to crack the top 10 charts.

Full disclosure, I have not seen "Animal," but the trailer is truly nuts, flitting between John Wick-style bombast and what appears to be genuine attempts at depicting heartfelt emotion and family drama. That erratic energy has seemingly manifested on Rotten Tomatoes, where the film currently holds a 31% critic score but an 81% audience score. As such, you might want to check this one out just to witness what is surely one of the most intriguingly bizarre action blockbusters to come out of India in a while.

That said, it's always worth mentioning that, as the streaming debut of "The Snowman" showed, Netflix viewers will watch pretty much anything. So there's no guarantee that the audience score and the Netflix success actually says anything about the quality of "Animal." Still, at least the trend of international films gaining worldwide audiences continues.