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For data nerds – it’s our favorite time of the year – the second half of 2024 viewing data has just been released! We’ve got a lot more to come, but what are the most-watched movies and series of the second half of the year? Let’s dive straight in.

What are the key points that Netflix has cited as being the most important for this data drop? Netflix reiterated that Engagement (time spent watching) is the best metric to gauge member satisfaction and that this data drop covers ~99% of all video watch time on Netflix and that no single title accounts for more than 1% of total Netflix viewing.

Squid Game S2 had the most hours viewed (0.7% of total viewing), and their total watch time for this period of July to December 2024 was 94B hours (5% increase YoY). Their most-viewed series was Squid Game S2 (87M views) despite premiering only 6 days before year-end.

Un thriller de supervivencia ambientado en el lugar más remoto del planeta. © Prime Video

Prime Video ha lanzado las primeras imágenes de Punto Nemo, su nueva serie original, dirigida por Denis Rovira (La influencia) y escrita por Daniel Martín Sáez de Parayuelo (Matadero) y Daniel Benmayor (Awareness).

En Punto Nemo, los miembros de una expedición oceanográfica compuesta por científicos y la Armada Española se embarcan en el buque Pentonkontors para investigar y concienciar al mundo de los problemas de la isla de plástico localizada en el Pacífico Sur. Sin embargo, una fuerte tormenta arrastra a los miembros de la expedición hasta una isla situada en los confines del planeta. Se trata de un lugar anteriormente habitado por militares rusos, que pondrá a prueba todas sus habilidades e instinto de supervivencia para intentar salir del punto más aislado del planeta Tierra: el Punto Nemo. Un lugar lleno de misterios y peligros al acecho.

¿Hasta dónde llegarías para encontrar la verdad? © Netflix

Netflix ha publicado el primer tráiler de La chica de nieve 2: El juego del alma, la segunda adaptación de la saga de novelas de Javier Castillo, dirigida de nuevo por David Ulloa (La caza. Monteperdido) y Laura Alvea (Ánimas) y escrita por Jesús Mesas y Javier Andrés Roig (Estoy vivo).

Tras cerrar el caso de Amaya, Miren Rojo pensaba que lo peor había pasado, hasta que un sobre inesperado en una firma de libros lo cambia todo: «¿Quieres jugar?». Dentro, una polaroid con un nombre que resurge del pasado: Laura Valdivia, una joven desaparecida años atrás. Al mismo tiempo, el brutal asesinato de Allison Hernández en inquietantes circunstancias apunta a un exclusivo colegio, envuelto en secretos y en un macabro juego. Con Jaime como nuevo compañero, Miren se sumergirá en una peligrosa investigación que pondrá en riesgo no sólo su vida,...

Quick Links What Letting The Child Ascend Means For Perempuan In The Platform 2's Ending The Platform 2's Mid-Credits Scene Explained Why The Administration Puts Children At Level 333 Why Perempuan Came To The Pit Why Zamiatin Jumped To The Bottom Of The Pit The Symbolism Behind The Drowning Dog Painting Explained The Anointed One's Law Explained What The Platform 2's Ending Really Means How The Pit In The Platform 2 Works The Platform 2 Is Actually A Prequel How The Platform 2's Ending Sets Up A Third Movie

Warning! This post contains major spoilers for The Platform 2.Like the 2020 original, 2024 Spanish dystopian sci-fi The Platform 2 intentionally leaves viewers with many unanswered questions, but many subtle details throughout the Netflix original's runtime might have provided some concrete answers. After featuring a sequence that reveals many prisoners' dietary choices in the pit, The Platform 2 jumps ahead and shows how someone from the floors above...

Netflix’s rom-com series Nobody Wants This attracted more viewing in its second week, moving up one spot to second overall in Nielsen’s weekly streaming charts.

The series starring Kristen Bell and Adam Brody drew 1.21 billion minutes of watch time for the week of Sept. 30-Oct. 6, a 16 percent improvement on its premiere week. It also moved up one spot in the overall rankings, as the prior week’s second-place title, Inside Out 2, dropped by 50 percent to a still strong 908 million minutes of viewing on Disney+.

Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story finished first overall for the third consecutive week with 1.41 billion minutes of viewing, down about 41 percent week to week. Netflix’s dating show Love Is Blind returned to the charts with a billion-minute week; its seventh season premiered on Oct. 2.

Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power debuted its season two finale on Oct.

Netflix's new survival thriller with a 75% Rotten Tomatoes score has become a global hit just days after its release. Since 2015, the popular streaming service has been producing original movies that fall into a wide range of genres from action, horror, thriller, romantic comedy, and science-fiction. Within this wide range, thrillers are particularly popular, with many of Netflix's 2024 movies falling into the genre, including Rebel Ridge, Trigger Warning, The Union, and many more.

Among Netflix's original movies, survival thrillers seem to hold an extra special appeal, focusing on characters fighting against extreme odds and often blending elements from various genres, mainly horror. In 2018, Sandra Bullock's Bird Box became one of Netflix's most-watched movies in its history. Additionally, the Spanish-language The Platform, packed with social commentary, and the French-language Under Paris are among Netflix's most-watched non-English movies. The former was followed by a sequel, The Platform 2, in 2024, which briefly became the No.

La película se proyectó en el Festival de Cine de San Sebastián y también lo hará en el Festival de Cine Europeo de Sevilla. © A Contracorriente Films

Ya se ha publicado el primer tráiler de Los últimos románticos, el segundo largometraje de David Pérez Sañudo (Ane), que tuvo su estreno mundial en el Festival Internacional de Cine de San Sebastián y se proyectará en el Festival de Cine Europeo de Sevilla antes de su estreno en salas.

Basada en la novela homónima de Txani Rodríguez, ganadora del Premio Euskadi de Literatura, Los últimos románticos /Azken erromantikoak sigue a Irune, una mujer insegura, solitaria y con tendencias hipocondríacas que trabaja en una fábrica de papel situada en las afueras de un pueblo industrial. Su vida se limita a un reducido círculo de conocidos: sus compañeros de trabajo, una vecina con la que comparte algo parecido a una amistad y un operador...

Spanish TV fiction continues to reinforce its position at the forefront of global TV, maintaining its edge, its impact on streaming services and overseas reach. Recognizing its merits, Mipcom celebrates Spain as its 2024 Country of Honor. That honor is based on market performance.

Through Oct. 6 this year, seven Spanish titles hit No. 1 on Netflix’s global non-English TV series charts for a total of 15 of 40 weeks, just ahead of South Korea (13). Japan (three) and France (two) trailed well behind.

“Local Spanish TV shows as diverse as ‘Berlin,’ ‘The Asunta Case’ and ‘Raising Voices’ led the way due to their authenticity and quality,” explains Verónica Fernández, Netflix director, series & films in Spain and Portugal.

At Prime Video, the Dopamine-Focus series “Red Queen” debuted Feb. 29 as No. 1 in more than 20 countries, including Spain.

That successful streaming performance extends to Spanish movies. J.A. Bayona’s 2023 multi-award winning “Society of the Snow” is...

The Platform 2's storyline is unique in more ways than one, but viewers looking for something similar still have a wide range of thrillers to choose from. Serving as a prequel to Netflix's The Platform, The Platform 2 unfolds in a vertical prison system like its predecessor. The primary driving force behind the movie's narrative is a floating platform that lowers down from one level of the prison to another, carrying food for the inmates. However, when some prisoners from the upper levels act selfishly and eat way more than they deserve, an intense power struggle ensues in the system.

In many ways, The Platform 2 serves as a solid allegory for both trickle-down economics and the downsides of communism. At the same time, with its character beats, the movie also dabbles with other relatable themes surrounding grief, identity, morality, and acceptance of one's past. While both The Platform...

Goreng and Perempuan's meeting in The Platform 2's mid-credits scene makes one question how the two characters know each other. Directed by Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia, The Platform 2 expands the first movie's lore by introducing a new set of leads, Perempuan and Zamiatin, in its opening arc. Like The Platform's main characters, Perempuan and Zamiatin enter the pit with their own hopes and expectations, believing their stay in the vertical prison will help them find redemption.

However, their journey, too, takes a grim turn when they find themselves in the harrowing depths of the pit, where they get access to no food. Similar to the original film, The Platform 2 also gets more and more abstract with its ideas and storytelling as it progresses. Even The Platform 2's ending arc becomes increasingly ambiguous, leaving much to the viewer's imagination. Before its final credits start rolling, The Platform 2...

Monster High 2 has become a global Netflix hit. The 2023 title is a sequel to the live-action horror-comedy musical movie about a high school for monsters, adapting the toy line of the same name. The movie originally premiered on Nickelodeon and Paramount+ and stars Miia Harris, Ceci Balagot, Nayah Damasen, The Other Two's Case Walker, and Love, Victor star Ana Ortiz. When it premiered on the platform, it didn't register on the Nielsen streaming chart and indeed was viewed less than the then 10-year-old Martin Scorsese movie The Wolf of Wall Street, which was also streaming on Paramount+.

Netflix has now calculated their global Top 10 most-watched English-language movies for the week of October 7 through October 13. Even though it is not available on the streamer in the United States, Monster High 2 landed at No. 8 on the chart with 4.1 million viewers amassing a total of 6.5 million viewing hours. The movie...

Warning! This post contains spoilers for The Platform 2.

This post contains descriptions of some of the most violent moments from The Platform 2.

Although The Platform 2 features many character death scenes, some of them are far more brutal than others. Like its predecessor, The Platform 2 sets the stage for its terrifying drama by featuring several violent sequences in its opening arc. While some of these early gruesome scenes play a crucial role in establishing the divides between the prisoners in the central vertical jail, others reveal the rules that govern the skewed food distribution within its walls.

In its ending moments, The Platform 2 ups the ante of its action and drama by increasing the intensity of the brutalities faced by its main characters. The character deaths either portray the lengths the prisoners will go to survive or serve as stark reminders of how the harsh realities...

Warning! This post contains spoilers for The Platform 2.

The Platform 2 features a strange anti-gravity sequence in its ending moments, which makes it hard not to wonder where it is set. Although Netflix's The Platform 2 was initially expected to be set after the events of its predecessor, it introduces several narrative twists and turns that suggest its timeline unfolds before The Platform. These timeline changes ultimately play a crucial role in helping The Platform 2 etch its own identity while allowing it to feature subtle references to the original movie.

Apart from following its own standalone narrative that initially has little to no connection with the original movie, The Platform 2 also attempts to reveal more details about the central vertical prison system. It finally highlights how the prisoners are moved from one cell to another after their one-month tenure on a level comes to an end.

Warning! This post contains spoilers for The Platform 2.

Although Perempuan and Zamiatin's reasons for entering the pit initially remain unknown, The Platform 2 eventually reveals the truth behind how they ended up there. In The Platform 2's opening moments, Perempuan and Zamiatin find themselves in one of the upper levels of the central vertical prison. However, despite this, Zamiatin struggles to adapt to the food distribution system because someone from the levels above him keeps feasting on his pizza.

As the movie progresses, Zamiatin adopts a tough demeanor while Perempuan maintains her distance from him. To their dismay, just when they start getting comfortable around one another, they end up in one of the lower levels of the pit, where they get access to no food. This pushes the two characters from The Platform 2 to the brink of their survival instincts, forcing them to confront all the...

Warning! This post contains spoilers for The Platform 2.

Even though The Platform 2 primarily revolves around a new set of characters, it does not shy away from featuring some familiar faces from the original movie. Directed by Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia, the Spanish thriller, The Platform, performed incredibly well both commercially and critically when it landed on Netflix in 2019. Its success encouraged the streamer to greenflag its sequel, The Platform 2, which unfolds in the same dystopian setting as its predecessor but attempts to expand the overarching lore established in the original film.

In its early moments, The Platform 2 focuses on two characters, Perempuan and Zamiatin, who were not a part of the first film's roster. However, as its story progresses, The Platform 2 marks the return of many characters from the 2019 movie. While some of these characters become crucial drivers of the sequel's narrative, others appear in smaller capacities...

Netflix’s true crime offerings have struck again, with The Menendez Brothers documentary currently reigning as the platform’s top series, overtaking The Platform 2. This gripping documentary revisits the infamous 1989 murders of José and Kitty Menendez, committed by their sons, Lyle and Erik, who are now serving life sentences. The series provides a rare look at the brothers as they speak out from behind bars, recounting the crime that shocked America and the trials that followed.

While The Menendez Brothers documentary takes a factual approach, Netflix also offers a dramatized version of the case with Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story. This series, part of the Monster anthology, focuses on the same murders but presents the events through a Rashomon-style lens, showing multiple perspectives with the brothers’ point of view as the central focus. With acclaimed actors Nicholas Alexander Chavez and Cooper Koch playing Lyle and Erik, and...

Jason Statham's action thriller movie The Mechanic, which made $76.3 million at the box office, landed on Netflix's Top 10 US chart 13 years after its release. Statham's action movies are what the lead actor is best known for, being the face of everything from The Expendables movies to The Meg duology. However, one of the action movies that helped expand his role in the gene was The Mechanic, a 2011 remake of the Charles Bronson-led 1972 movie of the same name. Statham's version got mixed reviews from critics, but is still well-remembered for its action sequences.

Now, Netflix has revealed The Mechanic made it onto the streaming service's Top 10 movies list in the US for the week of September 30 through October 6, 2024. The movie came in at Number 5 for the week, just under the Sylvester Stallone-led action film Escape Plan, and just above The Platform 2, a sequel to the streamer's popular 2019 Spanish sci-fi movie.

Warning: Major spoilers for The Platform 2 below!A famous painting not only underlines the main subtext of The Platform 2, it also plays a key role during the story. The ending of Netflix's The Platform didn't exactly set up a sequel and saw protagonist Goreng (Ivn Massagu) descend into a dark void beneath the movie's nightmarish prison. He may have succeeded in saving the life of a child, but the story heavily implies this entire sequence is just his dying thoughts. The Netflix sci-fi thriller itself felt like one giant metaphor, with the "Vertical Self-Management Center" being an obvious allegory for capitalism and the distribution of wealth.

The Platform 2 is headed by a new cast of characters (though some familiar faces also return) with Milena Smit's artist Perempuan struggling to adapt to the hellish nature of the tower. It's notable that the Platform 2's ending is...

The Platform 2 has become a hit on Netflix's global top 10 chart. The Platform 2 is the sequel film to the 2019 film The Platform, which first introduced audiences to a world that as constructed a prison wherein the inmates are fed via a descending platform that starts on the top level and proceeds to the bottom. The Platform 2 picks up with another story about this prison, expanding the first film's lore. This Spanish-language thriller is directed by Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia, and features a leading cast including Milena Smit, Hovik Keuchkerian, Natalia Tena, Oscar Jaenada, and Ivan Massague.

Now, The Platform has found success on Netflix's streaming chart. The film was no. 1 on the non-English language chart for the week of September 30 to October 6, amassing 19.4 million views. The Platform also made it onto the global chart for non-English language films, making it to no. 5. Looking at the English-language chart as well,...

Both its release date (March 2020) and subject matter conspired to make Spanish thriller The Platform a pandemic mega-hit for Netflix four years ago. The streaming giant will be hoping that this follow-up — which hurls us back into the nightmarish tower-block prison dubbed ‘The Pit’ — might bank similar record-breaking viewing-figure returns. Sadly, on the strength of the film's quality alone, that seems unlikely.

Before we get to the meat of this confounding sequel-or-is-it-a-prequel (more on that confusion in a moment), a brief recap for those who might have missed the first outing. The Pit — also known by its more PR-friendly title ‘The Vertical Self-Management Centre’ — is a 333-floor jail, featuring two cellmates per floor. Once a day, a floating platform containing a vast, medieval-style banquet descends from the very top to the very bottom, stopping briefly at each floor. Inmates are permitted to gorge themselves on as much grub as they can while it's there,...

Warning! This post contains spoilers for The Platform 2.

The Platform 2 introduces two factions, the loyalists and barbarians, in its central prison system, with both representing contrasting philosophies. Like its predecessor, The Platform 2 begins by following the struggles of two inmates who try to adapt to the central prison system's dubious food distribution methods. As the Netflix sci-fi movie progresses, the two characters, Zamiatin and Perempuan, interact with their neighbors and learn how the population in the prison is divided into two groups: the loyalists and the barbarians.

Believing that one group's philosophies are far more morally righteous than the other's, Perempuan chooses to become a loyalist. However, her journey in the central prison is marred with several challenges and tragedies that force her to change her mind about how she perceives people from both groups. With this, The Platform 2 effectively uses both groups as narrative devices...

Warning! This post contains spoilers for The Platform 2.

Zamiatin keeps mentioning the mathematical imaginary number in The Platform 2, making it hard not to wonder what it means and how it reveals the truth behind his backstory. In The Platform 2's opening moments, Zamiatin and Perempuan find themselves in the same cell of the central vertical prison. Although the two are initially careful about trusting one another, they soon warm up to each other and open up about their past lives and the actions that led them to join the prison system.

Perempuan's backstory reveals that she is in the pit to repent her actions from a time of upheaval because she cannot help but feel responsible for the death of an innocent child. Zamiatin traces his story back to his career as a mathematician, highlighting how his obsession with the imaginary number ultimately led him to live in the central vertical prison.

In the gory thriller The Platform 2, a woman named Perempuán (Milena Smit) fights for her life in a vertical prison that feeds its inmates once a day via a moving concrete table filled with decadent foods … except, there are hundreds of floors and twice as many people living among them. How will they ration? By fairness or by force? Read on to find out what happens in the second installment of The Platform, from director Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia.

The Pit, aka the Vertical Self-Management center, is a vertical prison with 333 levels. People elect to be imprisoned there as penance for their self-proclaimed sins. Before entering, each person must declare what their “I’d eat this everyday if I could” favorite food is. They’re also allowed to bring one item each into the prison. A single moving platform...

Monsters: The Lyle And Erik Menendez Story. (L to R) Nicholas Chavez as Lyle Menendez, Chloë Sevigny as Kitty Menendez, Javier Bardem as Jose Menendez, Cooper Koch as Erik Menendez in Monsters: The Lyle And Erik Menendez Story. Cr. Courtesy Of Netflix © 2024 Netflix has released its Top 10 list for the week of September 30th, and it’s a captivating mix of genres that has something for everyone. Romance takes center stage with Nobody Wants This claiming the #1 spot on the English TV list. This charming rom-com starring Kristen Bell and Adam Brody has viewers swooning and rewatching their favorite scenes (especially those kisses!). Meanwhile, Love is Blind Season 7 makes a dramatic entrance at #3, promising even more relationship rollercoaster rides with new episodes dropping October 9th. The true-crime drama Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story grips audiences, landing at #2. The series has even sparked renewed interest in the real-life case,...

Apparently everybody wants “Nobody Wants This.” The Kristen Bell/Adam Brody comedy from creator Erin Foster has knocked out “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” to become the No. 1 English TV program on Netflix for the week of Sept. 13, with 15.9 million views in its second week. “Monsters” continues to be a monster, however, as its 13.1 million views was still good enough to slide into the No. 2 slot.

“Nobody Wants This” debuted last week at No. 2 with 10.3 million views in its first four days of streaming. For “Monsters,” the show continues to dominate the Netflix chart, having spent the previous two weeks at No. 1 (including 19.5 million views last week).

Debuting at No. 3 on the English chart was Season 7 of “Love Is Blind,” coming in with 5.2 million views, while the Season 3 return of coming-of-age drama “Heartstopper” clocked in at No. 4 with 4.5 million views.

Meanwhile, chugging along at an impressive pace is...

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“Nobody Wants This” hasn’t just overtaken viewers’ hearts; it’s overtaken the No. 1 spot on Netflix’s Top 10 most-watched English-language TV shows. The Kristen Bell and Adam Brody romantic comedy surpassed the viewership for “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” in its second week of eligibility.

Overall, the series secured 15.9 million views compared to the 13.1 million views “Monsters” saw during the week of Sept. 30 to Oct. 6. This isn’t the first time these two shows have shared the first and second spots. Last week, their ranking was reversed with Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s “Monsters” scoring 19.5 million views in its second week on the streamer and “Nobody Wants This” seeing 10.3 million views in its first week.

The two current TV powerhouses were followed by the seventh season of “Love Is Blind,...

Audiences can’t get enough of Adam Brody and Kristen Bell in Netflix’s Nobody Wants This.

In its first full week on the streamer, the 10-episode romcom rose to 15.9M views, making it No. 1 in TV and the most-watched English language title of the week. It couldn’t beat The Platform 2, a Spanish thriller, which generated 19.4M views and topped the Non-English film list.

Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story fell to second place during this interval, still tallying 13.1M views, while Love is Blind Season 7 launched with 5.2M views.

Heartstopper also returned to the list with Season 3 amassing 4.5M views, which was good enough for fourth place. The Perfect Couple is also still holding onto a spot at No. 5 with 3.8M views. Meanwhile, Season 4 of Emily in Paris is losing steam, coming in at No. 9 with 2.6M views.

Things were a bit slow on the English films list.

How many times has a forgotten film found success on Netflix? Surely too many to count. The service has proven time and time again that, no matter how bad a movie is, if the public have been given long enough to forget it existed, it will more than likely see a resurgence in interest when fed into the streaming machine. Just take a look at the 2008 Keanu Reeves thriller "Street Kings," which had a renaissance on Netflix back in 2023. Or when Netflix breathed new life into the forgotten Aaron Eckhart-led action thriller "The Bricklayer" this year.

Now, it's Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg's turn. Wahlberg is no stranger to a streaming resurgence, with the actor's "Shooter" making waves on Netflix in 2023. This time, though he's joined by Denzel (who only just found his way into Netflix's top charts last month thanks to "American Gangster") in 2013's buddy cop actioner "2 Guns.

Like the first film in the franchise, The Platform 2 features a twisting, emotionally charged plot that may leave some scratching their heads. 

The Platform 2, streaming on Netflix, centers yet again on The Hole, a vertical prison where food is fed floor-by-floor as it descends from top to bottom on a platform.

That system would work fine if everyone only took their fair share, but one person on the floors above taking too much can lead to those on the lower levels going hungry. 

Read full article on The Direct.

Number two film of the summer “Deadpool & Wolverine” (Disney), held back from any home viewing until after its tenth weekend in theaters, took the #1 spot on both iTunes (ranking by transactions) and Fandango (by revenue). But perhaps only for a brief stay.

“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” (Warner Bros.), a major hit though not quite in the same league as the Marvel sequel ($235 million U.S./Canada gross so far versus $634 million; both films still in the top 10) will likely replace it when released Tuesday on PVOD after its fifth weekend. That feels a little early (32 days), more so since Tim Burton’s sequel is still #3, with over $10 million.

But if anything, it appears PVOD release boosts theatrical play as of late, at least in the short term. In any event, with the opening weekend debacle of “Joker: Folie à Deux” (revised downward to $37.8 million), it will provide some immediate cash to the Burbank studio.

Spoilers for "The Platform 2" follow.

Both Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia's "The Platform" and "The Platform 2" take place in the same futuristic prison, and abide by the same rules. The prison is a massive, narrow tower, hundreds of floors high. There is one cell on each floor, each occupied by two cellmates. A massive hole punctures through all the floors, and prisoners can look up and down at one another. Once a day, a floating platform covered with food floats down through all the cells, stopping briefly on each floor. Prisoners on the top can eat however much they like, but the prisoners below get their scraps. 

In "The Platform 2," unlike the first, the prisoners have instigated a strict code of behavior about the food. To make sure everyone is fed, they are all instructed -- on the honor system -- to take only a small amount of food earmarked for them.

Warning: this article contains spoilers for "The Platform 2"

Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia's "The Platform 2" debuted on Netflix on Friday, October 4, and it was a slight improvement over the original. Frustratingly, "The Platform 2" didn't do much to expand on the mythology of the original film, or extend outside the same prison where the first "Platform" takes place, merely telling a very similar story in a slightly more dynamic way. To reiterate the premise: "The Platform 2" takes place in a futuristic, tower-like prison with one cell occupying each floor. There is a table-sized hole in the middle of the floor in every cell, and every day, an antigravity platform festooned with food lowers from the top of the prison all the way down to the bottom. 

Prisoners at the top can eat whatever they like, while down below, they have to feast on table scraps. By the time the...

2019's "The Platform" was a dystopian horror movie that blended "Cube" with "Don Quixote." Described in /Film's review as "a dirty blast," this grim, on-the-nose allegory for social stratification was a hit for Netflix, especially after the pandemic hit and everyone turned to streaming to pass the time. When Netflixers weren't watching Chris Hemsworth punch people in "Extraction," they were watching director Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia's disturbing vision of a vertically-stacked prison where inmates are fed from a single platform that moves downward through the levels. As you can imagine, when the platform hits the lower cells, there isn't much left for the bottom-dwellers, leading the inmates to turn to cannibalism and all-out savagery in the face of their bleak existence.

If that sounds like a grand old time, you might be glad to know that a sequel, or rather, prequel has arrived. "The Platform 2" actually offers a more interesting take on this bizarre premise,...

As The Platform 2 climbs the Netflix charts, it’s reigniting conversations about its intense exploration of class disparity and survival. This gripping sequel builds upon the themes that made the original film a phenomenon, pushing viewers to confront the uncomfortable realities of society’s hierarchies. If you’re intrigued by the psychological tension and moral dilemmas presented in The Platform 2, then you won’t want to miss the eight compelling films below. Each one complements the sequel’s themes, offering a unique lens on human behavior under extreme circumstances, and guaranteeing an enthralling movie night that will keep you thinking long after the credits roll. So without a further delay, let’s have a look at the movies like Netflix’s The Platform 2. 1. Snowpiercer (2013)

Directed by Bong Joon-ho, Snowpiercer plunges viewers into a frozen dystopian future where the remnants of humanity live aboard a train that endlessly circles the globe.

Warning: Major spoilers for Netflix's The Platform 2 below!The Platform 2's ending again revolves around rescuing a child, but what is the purpose of these imprisoned children within the franchise? The Platform was a major success for Netflix in 2019, where Ivn Massagu's Goreng tries to survive his time within a "Vertical Self-Management Center," a fancy term for a surreal prison where food is distributed via the title platform. The movie wasn't subtle about its commentary on class or the distribution of wealth within society, and the film itself is one big metaphor.

The Platform's ending offered a glimmer of hope when Goreng decides to send a message to the prison's cruel, unseen administration by saving a life. His fate was deliberately left ambiguous, and a new cast of characters fronts The Platform 2. The sequel still doesn't reveal who built the tower or why, but it...

Pumpkin spice season, spooky season … whatever you like to call this time of year, 12-foot skeletons are popping up left and right and Halloween is just around the corner, which means it’s the perfect time of year to watch horror movies. Sometimes you want a Halloween classic, but sometimes, you want something brand new.

Fortunately, October always has a robust lineup new horror movies to stream, and 2024 is no different. In fact, the first week of the month is positively packed with new streaming debuts, from a new spin on Stephen King’s beloved novel “Salem’s Lot” to the body-swap thriller Netflix dropped $17 million to acquire. Here’s your guide to all the new horror movies streaming this week.

“Salem’s Lot” (Max) “Salem’s Lot”

Streaming On: Max

Release Date: Oct. 3

Stephen King‘s celebrated (and rather lengthy) vampire novel “Salem’s Lot” gets a film adaptation from “Annabelle Comes Home...

Spanish director Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia’s innovative dystopian thriller The Platform was conceptually intriguing enough to spur a series of discussions involving the philosophical and psychological implications of survival in a vertical prison that imitates the social hierarchy. As a cherry on top, the movie also featured a number of interesting characters as prisoners, all burdened with their sins, having their own personal motivation and ideology—which inevitably evolved over the course of their quest for survival. While the number of key characters has been reduced in the sequel, with a noticeable lack of that x factor in the leads, a different approach to the narrative offers characters a much more varied perspective this time around. Additionally, old cast members reappear in this installment as well in various capacities, much to the delight of fans of the first movie.

Zamiatin, Played By Hovik Keuchkerian Burgui

Former heavyweight boxing champion turned actor...

The themes of entrapment and the fight for survival in a manufactured environment have become recurrent narrative tropes in 21st-century cinema. While Vincenzo Natali’s “Cube” (1997) put a sci-fi spin on the survival quest of a group of strangers, the Japanese action thriller “Battle Royale” and similar iterations (including the hit Netflix series “Squid Game”) found grim sociopolitical parallels to our contemporary dog-eat-dog world. The winsome young adult stories like “Hunger Games” and “Maze Runner” put a dystopian cloak to the survival game tales. Then there were also richly allegorical dystopian visions in movies like “The Snowpiercer” and “The Platform.” The latter of the two – from Spanish filmmaker Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia – felt like an assortment of familiar sociopolitical elements ensconced within this familiar narrative, but it offered unique twisty visual delights and an ever-deepening metaphor for social inequality.

Recommended: Top 10 Netflix Original Spanish Thrillers

Moreover, “The Platform” accidentally became a movie...

Warning: Major spoilers for The Platform 2 below!The Platform 2 pulls a major surprise on viewers around the midway point and this twist reframes the whole story. The original Platform was a shock success back in 2019, with Netflix's dystopian thriller set inside a hellish prison dubbed a "Vertical Self-Management Center." The film was a violent, darkly comic satire on capitalism, and while The Platform's ending didn't exactly set up a sequel, its rating success made one inevitable.

A new cast of characters heads The Platform 2, where Milena Smit's Perempuan must adjust to life inside the surreal penitentiary. The choice to follow a new protagonist is a smart one, as it avoids resolving the ambiguous finale of the first entry. While the follow-up does expand the lore of the franchise, The Platform 2 wisely never reveals the prison's purpose or who built it. Instead, it follows...

Despite returning the property to a dormant state after its release, Taron Egerton's infamous Robin Hood reboot has found new life on streaming. Starring Egerton as the titular folklore rogue, Otto Bathurst's 2018 movie saw a disgraced Robin take up arms against the corrupt powers ruling Nottingham that took his wealth and status to further their own cause, joining forces with the rebelling commoners. Robin Hood also starred Jamie Foxx as Robin's accomplice John, Eve Hewson as his love interest Marian, and Ben Mendelsohn as the Sheriff of Nottingham.

Despite a poor performance at the box office and poor impressions on critics, Robin Hood is finding a surprising new audience on Netflix. Though it holds an unenviable 14% among critics' reviews and a slightly more impressive but still unremarkable 39% among viewers, the feature recently entered Netflix's Top 10 Movies. At the time of writing, Egerton's 2018 reboot holds the No. 8 spot, coming...

2 Guns is climbing the charts on Netflix. The 2013 Mark Wahlberg action movie featured the star playing Michael "Stig" Stigman, a special ops officer with the U.S. Navy opposite Denzel Washington as DEA Special Agent Bobby Trench. Both have been working undercover in narcotic, unknown to the other, which causes an incident that forces them to go on the run with only each other as backup. When it premiered, the movie grossed $131.9 million worldwide against its $61 million budget.

Now, 2 Guns has landed on the daily chart of the Top 10 most-watched movies on Netflix in the United States. The movie appeared at No. 6 on the chart on Saturday, October 5, with all but one movie above it being newly added releases on the platform. Those movies were Escape Plan at No. 5, The Garfield Movie at No. 4, The Mechanic at No. 3, and the new Netflix exclusive The Platform 2 at No. 2.

What...

Escape Plan, the 2013 Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger prison action thriller, has enjoyed a new lease of life on the streaming platform Netflix. The movie, which co-stars 50 Cent, Jim Caviezel, Vinnie Jones, Amy Ryan, Vincent D'Onofrio, and Sam Neill, was directed by Swedish filmmaker Mikael Hfstrm, with a screenplay by Miles Chapman and Arnell Jesko. The movie received mixed reviews and was a box office success, grossing $137 million against a budget of $54 million to $70 million, and was followed by two sequels, both featuring Stallone.

Now, 11 years after the movie's initial release, it appears to be enjoying fresh success on streaming giant Netflix, with the film entering the platform's Top 10 movies in the United States for today. The movie has debuted at number 5 on the charts, edging out the Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg action-comedy 2 Guns, It: Chapter Two, Robin Hood, Jailbreak: Love On the Run, and 2018 Halloween remake,...

After the wild success of the original, The Platform 2 is disappointing for critics and audiences alike. The sequel to the original 2019 movie, it continues to tell the story of convicts in a vertical prison. With food distributed from the top floor and being sent down, the top floors horde everything available, leaving the bottom floors to starve. The original movie was led by Ivn Massagu's Goreng, but The Platform 2's cast is led by Milena Smit's Perempuan. Its sequel was just released on September 27.

While the first movie enjoyed immense success on Rotten Tomatoes, its follow-up is struggling. It currently sits at a 55% Tomatometer score, and audiences have offered a painful 29% Popcornmeter score. By contrast, the original has an 81% Tomatometer score and a 73% Popcornmeter score. After so much success for the first movie, it is struggling to achieve the original's relative acclaim.

Developing...

Source: Rotten Tomatoes

The Platform 2...

All we could assume before Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia’s The Platform 2 hit Netflix’s platform was that it’d have that cursed setting in common with the original. But despite having brand new protagonists and antagonists in the form of new inmates in the Pit, The Platform 2 is connected to The Platform in more ways than one. One of the most gnawing questions that The Platform 2 left the viewers to stew in is about the curious case of the kids. And believe it or not, the kids connect the stories of the two films on both a fundamental and a tangible level.

Spoiler Alert

The Platform 2 started with the kids playing on a strange pyramid-like structure made of stairs and slides. They seemed peaceful and content even though there was not necessarily a meaning or purpose to their game. Much like that, the people in the Pit...

If history is to be followed, then it can be said that in its worst manifestation, order is not much different than chaos, no matter how antithetical these two concepts seem to be, something which director Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia focuses on while taking us back to his dystopian hellscape of a vertical prison in The Platform 2. If the first installment, The Platform, was a commentary on the horrors of social hierarchy, survival, and the dreaded depths of the human nature and psyche, the sequel brings a new threat in the form of organized faith—and how it can push even the question of survival to the backseat when people are misguided enough. It is really commendable how the director has managed to use the same setting to highlight another facet of human existence, that too by developing one of the major themes from the first movie.

Spoilers Ahead

The Master...

After Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia’s The Platform released during the pandemic generated significant buzz, the filmmaker along with his team of writers brought back a latest addition to his franchise—The Platform 2. Much like its predecessor (or successor), even this movie left viewers with many unanswered questions. And once again, these particularly shocking events in the narrative sparked significant buzz on Netflix.

Milena Smit as Perempuan in The Platform 2 | image: Netflix

Set in a dystopian world where residents in a tower prison fight to survive, The Platform 2 follows newcomer Perempuan (Milena Smit) on her journey through the nightmarish vertical prison ruled by dictatorship. While things appear a lot different in the latest movie, the shocking incidents, and cannibalism, followed by a bewildering ending, remain the same. So let’s delve deeper into what happens and how the film ends.

What is Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia’s The Platform 2 About?

Following...

It’s October, officially known as “spooky season,” a term I just realized I’ve seen a lot less this year than in years prior. Maybe it’s a less spooky season than usual? In any case, “spooky season” means the streamers are putting up a lot of original horror movies this week. Max has “‘Salem’s Lot,” the latest adaptation of Stephen King’s vampire classic; Prime Video has “House of Spoils,” a Blumhouse psychological horror thriller starring Ariana DuBose as a Carmy-esque chef who’s either losing her mind or actually haunted; and Hulu has a period horror movie called “Hold Your Breath” starring Sarah Paulson as a mother in Dust Bowl Oklahoma who thinks there are monsters in the dust storms.

But none of those are our top picks this week. That would be “It’s What’s Inside,” a stylish Netflix horror comedy with a “Certified Fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

The Platform, or the Vertical Self-Management System (Vss), was most likely designed to help people tame the monsters that live inside all of us. But only a few strong-willed individuals are able to survive the devil’s lair, though so far we haven’t come across anyone who had survived the platform’s aftermath, not even the protagonist of the second film, Perempuan. [Spoiler Alert] In The Platform 2’s ending, Trimagasi made Perempuan realize that the inmates weren’t the prisoners of the pit, or The Administration. Instead, they are the prisoners of their own sin, and there isn’t any escape from that. Even though she had made peace with the death of the boy that was killed by her prestigious art, Perempuan wouldn’t be able to bring back what’s lost forever. And the very thought of it would haunt her forever. Yet Perempuan wanted to leave the...

Warning: Major spoilers for The Platform 2 below!The Platform 2 expands on the original film's premise, but it smartly decides to leave the key question of the series a myster. The original Platform arrived on Netflix in 2019, with the story taking place inside a hellish prison dubbed a "Vertical Self-Management Center." The film was an on-the-nose but potent metaphor for capitalism and the unfair distribution of wealth in society. The Platform's ending left many unanswered questions, but it also felt like this was the point.

A new cast of characters is introduced in The Platform 2 - though some familiar faces also make surprise appearances. Returning director Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia's sequel is even more gruesome and bleak than the first entry, as new resident/prisoner Perempuan (Milena Smit) has to quickly adapt to life within the Vertical Self-Management Center. The Platform 2's ending will once again leave viewers with questions,...

Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia drowns out the social commentary with a lot of noise in The Platform 2. The 2024 follow-up to the director’s then-unique social horror The Platform comes off complicated just for the sake of it. The intentionally trippy ending and the startling appearances of characters from the original are too overwhelming for you to even ponder the philosophical and sociopolitical questions the film wishes to pose. So let’s see if I can make all of that make sense for you.

Spoiler Alert

What happens in the film?

We’re back at the vertical hellhole where we followed Goreng’s story back in 2019. The platform that supposedly holds enough food for 666 people is lowered through the hole, and the greed of the ones above leaves nothing for the ones at the bottom. There’s a new set of people this time. And the new set of laws that a...