‘Dahmer’ Nabs Huge Debut As ‘Do Revenge’ Rallies In Week 2

In the latest weekly NetflixNFLX
ratings, Jennifer Kaytin Robinson’s teen girl comedy Do Revenge had a huge upswing in its first full week of release. The original, teen-targeted MA-rated comedy concerns two high schoolers (Camilia Mendes and Maya Hawke) who pull a Strangers on a Train and agree to get righteous vengeance on their respective archenemies. Spoiler alert: nobody’s mother gets thrown from a train. It debuted with a somewhat soft 26.67 million hours viewed in its opening weekend. That wasn’t a tragedy, as it’s not like it was a do-or-die, high-profile Netflix biggie. However, it jumped high in its first full week, earning 42.55 million hours. It is the most-watched movie on Netflix in the last week.

Yes, plenty of Netflix films earn more in their first Mon-Sun part versus their initial Fri-Sun debut, heck, that’s usually par for the course. But a 59.5% jump is solid. It’s not quite as big as The Sea Beast (from 33 million to 68 million) or Purple Hearts (48 million to 102 million), but it caught my attention. We’ll see if the film nose-dives after that critical first ten days. Most Netflix biggies sink like a stone after the first 1.5 weeks as the next big thing rolls in, and those which don’t (like Purple Hearts which earned 229 million hours in the first 28 days) can be presumed to be genuine old-school word-of-mouth success stories.

I mostly enjoyed Do Revenge on its own terms, even if I think there is a mean streak held back by the film’s need to metaphorically validate its audience. No spoilers, but the film brushes away some sinister plot turns so it can end on a note of ‘women supporting women and striking down the patriarchy.’ It’s not the first film to shy away from a grimdark finale due to market demands. Think Knight and Day teasing the notion of Tom Cruise being a delusional CIA turncoat or Central Intelligence walking back its ‘Dwayne Johnson has been the villain all along’ reveals. I forgave those films. This isn’t a pass/fail issue for Do Revenge.

To its credit, the film mostly goes its own way beyond just being a straight-up homage to the late-1980s-to-early-2000s teen comedies. It earns its place (varying quality aside) right beside the likes of Heathers, Jawbreakers, Clueless and Mean Girls. I’ve long argued that Netflix was better off making ‘new classic’ studio programmers that approximate the kind of character-focused, high-concept, non-franchise films that Hollywood seemed to discard, and this is a crucial example. You can spend $200 million on The Gray Man and earn 254 million hours, or you can make a Sofia Carson/Nicholas Gailtzine military romance and net 90% of the viewership for 1.4% of the budget. And you might make a generational favorite in the process.

Allison Janney got her action-hero merit badge this past weekend with Lou. Helmed by Anna Forester, who directed the first (and best) Underworld movie, Lou is less Liam Neeson’s Taken and more Angelina Jolie’s Those Who Wish Me Dead. Janney plays a retired and suicidal CIA vet who ends up helping a neighbor (Jurnee Smollett) track down her kidnapped daughter. The film is uncommonly cinematic and theatrical for a Netflix programmer. The Bad Robot production has a deluge of rain-soaked atmosphere. If I rolled my eyes at some plot turns, I’d concede that it looks and plays great as a quality programmer. Lou was the second-biggest movie of the weekend with 40.57 million hours in its ‘opening weekend.’

Tyler Perry’s A Jazzman’s Blues stumbled in its debut earning just 7.82 million hours. That’s horrible for a ‘big’ newbie. Judd Apatow’s The Bubble bombed with 12 million hours in March/April, but it’s currently #2 in America among movies behind Lou. I have not yet seen the sprawling, decade-spanning melodrama/murder mystery, but I am hopeful it’s something of an artistic comeback for Perry. He spent the first five years stretching as a filmmaker, with The Family That Preys and I Can Do Bad All By Myself alongside the broader Madea-centric comedies (although I’ll argue farce is more challenging than drama). I’ve long believed he was so stung by the (unfair) rejection of For Colored Girls in 2010 that he mostly stopped ‘trying.’

In the realm of television, Ryan Murphy’s controversial (at least on Twitter, where everything is controversial for 15 minutes) DAHMER: Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story earned a jaw-dropping 196 million hours. That’s one of the biggest weekly television hauls for the streamer, behind only the two season four drops of Stranger Things and the second week of the season of Bridgerton. Yes, it debuted on a Wednesday, but it’s still an enormous number. The docudrama, with a title that seems written by an SEO bot, capitalized on the general interest in true crime melodramas, our obsession with serial killers and a skewed generational nostalgia for a story that went down right when those over/under my age were young enough for it to make an impact.

Dahmer initially grew up in my hometown and went to my high school, even if he committed most of the murders in Milwaukee. I vividly remember coming back from two weeks at summer camp and hearing about the astonishing horrors that had just been uncovered. That said, I feel about this the same way I do about most ‘ real-life scandals reevaluated’ miniseries (Impeached, Inventing Anna, We Crashed, etc.) we’ve gotten over the last few years. Save for periodic milestones like The People Vs. O.J. Simpson or The Drop Out, you’re usually better off listening to “You’re Wrong About.” I’ll report back if my wife and/or oldest want to watch it. Cobra Kai dropped 61% in its third frame.

Speaking of less money for a similar impact, I caught the DTV actioner Section 8 over the weekend. Penned by Chad Law and directed by Christian Sesma, the film stars Ryan Kwanten (from Patrick Hughes’ terrific Red Hill) as a marine sent to prison for avenging his murdered family only to be sprung by a secret government agency in exchange for killing for Uncle Sam. If this sounds like Asylum’s The Gray Man, wait until you hear that he eventually earns the wrath of his new bosses and must evade an unhinged, trigger-happy assassin (Scott Adkins having a blast in an ‘oops, all berries’ role) and take down his employers. Dermot Mulroney, Dolph Lundgren and Mickey Rourke fill out the fringes,.

The film is at least as entertaining as (and a lot less chaotic than) the Ryan Gosling/Chris Evans actioner. The over/under $3 million Section 8 looked unusually polished, colorful and boasting a variety of locations along with the aforementioned actors not phoning it in. Not only is it good, well-structured, action-packed fun on a ‘direct-to-video’ curve, but it looks and plays like something I would have happily seen and enjoyed in a theater on a Saturday afternoon in my teens. When Section 8 eventually pops up on Netflix, it’ll make an ironic double-bill with the Russo’ franchise-intended action spectacular. Once again, you can spend $200 million to approximate a Hollywood blockbuster badly or $5-$20 million (or even $115 million for an Adam Project) to fill a genuine vacuum.