Netflix’s Next Challenge? Make Movie-Watching As Communal as TV-Watching

Netflix has been creating original TV series for five years now, and in that relatively short time, they’ve been wildly successful at creating shows that feel like mandatory viewing. From the heyday of House of Cards to Orange Is the New Black, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Making a Murderer, Stranger Things, and even something as comparatively staid as The Crown, Netflix is up there with cable networks like HBO, FX, and AMC in terms of putting out TV shows that immediately become part of the zeitgeist.

So why have they been utterly unable to do the same thing for their Netflix Original feature films? Last week at Indiewire, film critic David Ehrlich bemoaned the state of Netflix’s original films, calling the platform a “volatile sea of content” that essentially buries its own movies under the weight of its own vast content library. “I don’t know if Netflix has the power to kill the movies,” writes Ehrlich, “but the last few months have made one thing incredibly clear: Netflix certainly has the power to kill their movies, and it’s doing that with extreme prejudice. It’s not a distributor; it’s a graveyard with unlimited viewing hours. Netflix doesn’t release movies, it inters them.”

It’s a criticism that’s been levied at Netflix a lot lately, steadily more so ever since their attempt at an awards-season run for Cary Joji Fukunaga’s Beasts of No Nation in 2015 crashed and burned. Ever since, for as successful as Netflix has been launching TV shows, they’ve been just as stymied when it comes to getting their growing library of indie films off the ground. It’s most stark when you look at their film festival fare over the past two years:

• The Fundamentals of Caring, the Paul Rudd/Selena Gomez dramedy that Netflix bought for $7 million
• Tallulah, which starred Allison Janney and Ellen Page
• I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, from up-and-coming horror director Osgood Perkins
• Mascots, the latest mockumentary from Christopher Guest
• Barry, the second film last year about the life of a young Barack Obama
• Burning Sands, about fraternity hazing at a historically black college
• The Discovery, a sci-fi mind-bender starring Jason Segel, Rooney Mara, and Robert Redford
• Deidra and Laney Rob a Train, a very likeable teen dramedy
• I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore, the Melanie Lynskey-starring film that took the coveted Sundance Jury Prize

All of those movies, plus the South By Southwest-premiering The Most Hated Woman in America starring Melissa Leo, have premiered on Netflix in the last year. And to take Ehrlich’s point, you’d have a hard time convincing even the most dedicated Netflix viewer they were there, because they do just sort of blend into the wallpaper when searching through Netflix’s thousands of viewing options.

Netflix famously declines to give anyone (even the filmmakers themselves) access to their viewing data, so it’s hard to definitively say exactly how overlooked the Netflix feature films have been. But let’s go by a few imperfect-but-it’s-what-we’ve-got metrics. For the sake of comparison, let’s measure up Netflix originals with indie films that got limited theatrical releases. Tallulah debuted on July 29, 2016, the same weekend that the Philip Roth adaptation Indignation, starring Logan Lerman, opened on four screens. Let’s start with Google Trends:

That spike at the center is the opening weekend for both films. The Netflix movie, Tallulah, spikes on its opening weekend and then quickly falls away, while the theatrical rollout for Indignation kept it relevant (or as relevant as Google Trends indicates) for longer.

This sharp spike is how the Google Trend looks for pretty much all Netflix features. A sharp rise on opening weekend followed by a precipitous fall. If the idea is that Netflix is counting on user feedback, word of mouth, and widespread availability to keep its films relevant for longer periods of time, that’s not bearing out.

Here’s another data point Netflix’s 2016 Sundance acquisition The Fundamentals of Caring opened opposite three limited-release indies: Amazon’s The Neon Demon, A24’s Swiss Army Man, and The Orchard’s Hunt for the Wilderpeople:

Even when awareness for the Netflix title did prevail initially, that quick drop-off paled in comparison to the ways in which the theatrical releases stayed relevant.

One more: 2017’s Burning Sands, which premiered on Netflix the same day that the Olivier Assayas film Personal Shopper opened in a few theaters:

Some of these results can be explained away. Personal Shopper had Kristen Stewart while Burning Sands had no stars. Fundamentals of Caring wasn’t very good while Swiss Army Man and Wilderpeople were hits with critics. But in each case, Netflix’s features are experiencing a fast fade, despite much wider availability, while the platform releases are staying relevant longer.

Of course, there is a flip side to this anti-Netflix sentiment bubbling up in the critic community. Thanks to Netflix, anybody who was looking to see these movies and doesn’t happen to live in New York or Los Angeles (or any of the small handful of places where indie films get serious theatrical distribution) could now see these movies immediately upon release. No waiting for studios to expand screen counts; no crossing fingers that NY/LA audiences make the movies profitable enough to justify a wider release. Rhapsodize the theatrical experience all you want — and as someone who cherishes being able to see movies in theaters, even with all the headaches involved therein, I’m inclined to agree — but the reality is that the grand majority of indie films get watched after their theatrical runs, on VOD, streaming services, HBO, or even on that dusty old horse called physical media.

It’s also worth stressing that filmmakers don’t necessarily feel like Netflix is some great red menace. Filmmakers Joe Swanberg and Jake Johnson told the Ringer’s Channel 33 podcast that they actually sought out Netflix as a distributor for their new film Win It All specifically in order to bypass the indie distribution pattern. “There will be a percentage of [the film audience] who do really love this and claim this movie as theirs,” Johnson said. “And I think those people know how to find things they like. And I think those people would rather watch it at home, alone or with a friend or significant other, whatever their galaxy is. Let’s just go straight to them.”

The idea of getting your movie directly to its audience as quickly as possible is persuasive. But depending on audiences who “know how to find the things they like” is asking a lot when a platform like Netflix isn’t making that process very easy. It’s nearly impossible to deal objectively with the Netflix user experience since everything is tailored algorithmically to that particular user. But anecdotally, the “Netflix Originals” list that ideally should be where a Netflix user would go to find new feature film releases is instead burying features under TV series and stand-up comedy specials. For every feature film that gets a spot on the Netflix Originals carousel, there are 2-3 stand-up specials and 3-4 TV series.

What’s missing from the theatrical experience for a Netflix movie isn’t the theatrical, necessarily, it’s the experience. There’s something ephemeral about a theatrically released movie, particularly for dedicated movie fans (who are, let’s be honest, the people who are watching indies anyway). You see a trailer, hear some buzz from a festival, read a review, perhaps some word of mouth, and then you seek it out. And then you start telling other people about it. Netflix currently does a terrible of cultivating this cycle despite the fact that all of those elements should be well within its control. Trailers for Netflix movies naturally don’t play in theaters (why advertise your competition?), but awareness for Netflix trailers on the internet is also comparatively low. One more imperfect method of measuring awareness: trailer views on YouTube . Here again are Netflix movies compared to movies that opened that same weekend in theaters:

June 24, 2016
The Fundamentals of Caring (Netflix): 1.66 million views
Swiss Army Man (A24): 16.31m
The Neon Demon (Amazon): 8.38m
Hunt for the Wilderpeople: 1.04m

July 29, 2016
Tallulah (Netflix): 1.32m
Indignation (Focus): 4.38m

February 24, 2017
I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore (Netflix): 0.35m
Bitter Harvest (Roadside Attractions): 0.57m

March 10, 2017
Burning Sands (Netflix): 0.85m
Personal Shopper (IFC Films): 1.40m

March 31, 2017
The Discovery (Netflix): 1.48m
The Zookeeper’s Wife (Focus): 3.69m

April 7, 2017
Win It All (Netflix): 0.29m
Gifted (Fox Searchlight): 4.93m
Colossal (Neon): 1.80m
Your Name (FUNimation Films): 0.87m

Word-of-mouth and the ever ephemeral “buzz” operate like a snowball rolling downhill, picking up mass as it goes. Currently, buzz for Netflix movies operates like a rock rolling down a snow-less hill. It stays just as big as it was when it started, and before you know it, it’s hit the bottom.

The question, at the end of the day, is why can’t I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore become the next Stranger Things? If your argument is that Stranger Things was a big, meaty softball pitched right at the heart of mainstream nostalgia (which Home clearly isn’t), then fine: why can’t I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore become the next Bojack Horseman? Why can’t The Discovery — an ephemeral bit of emo sci-fi starring actual movie stars Jason Segel, Rooney Mara, and Robert Redford — become the next The OA? They don’t have to be monster hits, but these movies aren’t even becoming cult faves, which has been a tried and true path for indie movies for decades. They’re just getting lost.

In the coming months, Netflix will be releasing films from directors Bong Joon-ho (Okja), Adam Wingard (Death Note), and David Michod (War Machine). All three of these filmmakers managed to have modest indie hits via traditional theatrical distribution: Bong’s Snowpiercer made $4.5 million domestic ($86 mil worldwide), Wingard’s You’re Next made $18.4 mil domestic, and Michod’s Animal Kingdom made $6.7 mil worldwide and got an Oscar nomination for Jackie Weaver. These are major talents with built-in interest in their films. It will be very interesting to see if they fall prey to the same kind of buzzless release that has accompanied Netflix’s other feature films. They’ll be there for the finding; now it’s on Netflix to make sure they get found.