‘Archive 81’ Comes Out Of Nowhere To Become A Top Netflix Hit

I consider myself pretty up on all the latest big streaming shows, given that it’s my job, so I was surprised to see something called “Archive 81” appear rather high up on Netflix’s top 10 list suddenly. I figured it was probably a foreign series I simply hadn’t heard of that Netflix scooped up, but that’s not the case.

The show is a Netflix original horror series, in English, adapted not from a book or foreign series, but instead a podcast, also called Archive 81, currently in its third season. I’d never heard of this project before release, and I didn’t recognize any of its stars.

But that has not stopped Archive 81 from racing up Netflix’s top 10 charts. It’s the second-most watched show in the US as of today, and the #1 scripted series, given that the top show is the docu-series Cheer. Archive 81 has already passed up Cobra Kai, The Witcher and Emily in Paris with its debut, and potentially could make it to number one with enough word of mouth recommendations.

And is it easy to recommend? That depends on your tastes. Archive 81 is scoring well with critics, and between that in the concept, I sat down to watch it, and finished it in a single day. So yes, clearly it grabbed me to some extent. The show has an impressive 95% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, though user scores are lower at 65%. But I’ve already seen that rise about 10% since yesterday, and there aren’t all that many reviews in yet.

Far and away, Archive 81 reminds me the most of the classic horror offering Rosemary’s Baby about a creepy cult in an apartment building, but there’s a lot more going on than just that. As the show goes on, it leans more heavily into cosmic horror than satanic horror, and by the end, it feels like something pulled out of an HP Lovecraft story. Minus tentacles. No tentacles (yet). It’s also not very violent at all, if you’re concerned about that. Not gory, mostly eerie.

The show pitches itself as a “found footage” production, but it’s not, really. It spans two timelines, one where a main character, Dan, has to piece together footage from the 90s shot by a young filmmaker, Melody, but what you’re actually watching is not grainy “found” footage all that often, as you’ll really just be jumping back and forth between the timelines. It gets a little goofy to see Melody carrying around her camcorder as much as she does, but that’s always the conceit of these types of movies, I suppose.

Archive 81 goes a whole lot of places you won’t expect, creating engaging mysteries and ending on a cliffhanger that demands a second season. It seems there’s a lot more podcast material to cover, and that show is still airing, so who knows what the future holds here. But my guess is that this is a relatively cheap series punching above its weight class in the Top 10 chart, and if it keeps this up, season 2 is a sure thing. Any horror fan should give it a shot.

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