Netflix’s New Horror Sequel Dominates Viewership in Spite of Poor Reviews

Netflix struck gold with Spanish dystopian horror film The Platform, which was one of the biggest original movie hits for the streamer back in 2020. It came as no surprise that Netflix wanted to get back in business with director Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia for a sequel, hoping to replicate some of the original’s success. The Platform 2 arrived on Netflix this weekend, nearly four years after the premiere of The Platform, but both critics and general audiences had a lot less love for the property this time around.

The Platform 2 has delivered reviews and reactions far worse than its predecessor. The film has a 42% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, with a measly 27% approval rating from audience members on the site. On Letterboxd, The Platform 2 holds an average of 2.2 stars amongst users, far lower than the 3.3 average of the first Platform.

No matter how you slice it, The Platform 2 is being met with a largely negative response from anyone watching, but that doesn’t seem to be hurting its performance very much. In the latest streaming numbers from Netflix, The Platform 2 was far and away its most-watched movie last week, despite only arriving at the start of the weekend.

Netflix just released the numbers for the biggest movies and TV shows on the service from September 30th through October 6th. The Platform 2 was released on October 4th, meaning that it was available for less than half the time of the other eligible titles, and it still received higher viewership than anything else.

The Platform 2 was viewed for 32.6 million hours over the weekend, outpacing everything else on Netflix last week. The second most-watched movie on Netflix in that span was new action-comedy Trouble which saw a little over 16 million hours viewed.

It’ll be interesting to see if The Platform 2 can sustain this kind of success over a number of weeks. The first movie was a runaway hit because viewers really enjoyed it, and word-of-mouth continued to spread as time went on. There was also very little else to watch, as The Platform was released in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, when theaters were closed and there were very few new releases. In contrast, The Platform 2 doesn’t have great reactions from those who have seen it, and there are loads of other options, both at home and in the theater.

Regardless, The Platform 2 is clearly finding success on Netflix out of the gate, giving the streamer a chilling win for the start of Spooky Season.