Jessica Alba Reigns Over Netflix Top Charts With Trigger Warning

Several years ago, Netflix shook things up by not only including top ten charts on its platform for viewers to see, but the streaming giant also made a whole website dedicated to sharing viewership metrics. It has provided an odd window into what people are watching on the world's largest streaming service at any given time. At the moment, a whole bunch of people are watching a new action flick called "Trigger Warning," which stars Jessica Alba as an ass-kicking Special Forces soldier/bar owner.

As of this writing, director Mouly Surya's film is sitting firmly in the number one spot on the Netflix movie charts ahead of the DreamWorks animated flick "Home" and Universal's "Fifty Shades of Grey." The latter film's star, Dakota Johnson, has been having quite the run on Netflix, as Marvel's "Madame Web" recently dominated the charts as well – but that's another story altogether. According to data collected by FlixPatrol, "Trigger Warning" has been sitting atop Netflix's most-streamed movie list in a number of countries since it was released late last week. In the early going, this is proving to be a sizable hit for the company.

The film centers on a skilled Special Forces commando (Alba) who takes over her dad's bar after his rather sudden death. She soon finds herself mixed up with a violent gang that is running rampant in her hometown. The film also stars Mark Webber ("Green Room"), Tone Bell ("Survival of the Thickest"), Jake Weary ("Animal Kingdom"), Gabriel Basso ("The Night Agent"), Anthony Michael Hall ("Halloween Kills"), Kaiwi Lyman ("Copshop"), and Hari Dhillon ("The Beanie Bubble"). Thunder Road Films originally developed the project after acquiring Josh Olson and John Brancato's script. Netflix later came on board and tapped Alba to star.

The "Sin City" and "Fantastic Four" star is no stranger to action, having appeared in a number of films in the genre during her career. Her big breakout came in the relatively short-lived Fox TV series "Dark Angel" which debuted in 2000, so she's been at this for some time. But this new film allowed Alba to take the lead in an action movie, which is new territory. So on one hand, it's nice for an actress who has been in the game for so long to score a hit. The downside is that the movie has not been met with a warm response.

"Trigger Warning" currently boasts a rough 20% critical approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes to go with an even worse 16% audience rating. So it's not as though this is a situation where critics and viewers simply disagree, like 2018's "Venom," for example. Few people really seem to like the movie, and yet here it is, topping the Netflix charts and getting millions of views ahead of every other title in the streamer's library. So, why is it that a critically panned action movie is doing so well?

That's a difficult question to answer, but it's something that happens frequently on Netflix. Very recently, the Jennifer Lopez sci-fi flick "Atlas" had a healthy run atop the streamer's charts. It seems to happen all the time. But why is that? Is it just that people are happy to see Alba front-and-center in an action flick? Does it just seem like easy, passive viewing? There are no clear answers, but it certainly aligns with the trend of similar films managing to find an audience on Netflix. If that's what one wishes to do with their subscription, so be it. It just means we'll probably get more of the same in the future, for better or worse. 

"Trigger Warning" is now streaming on Netflix.