An Erotic Thriller Is Dominating On Netflix
The 2014 thriller Addicted has made its way into the Top 10 Movies streaming on Netflix.
This article is more than 2 years old
Willem Defoe and Madonna, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, Denise Richards, Neve Campbell, and Matt Dillon; some of the industry’s biggest names have lent their talents to push forward one of the darkest and most taboo of film genres, the erotic thriller. While some of the films in the genre become massive hits, like Basic Instinct with Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone or Indecent Proposal with Woody Harrelson and Demi Moore, others fall short of being lauded as a success, like 2014’s Addicted. Thanks to the world of streaming, some of these critical failures are getting a second life, and according to Flix Patrol, Addicted is cracking the top ten on Netflix globally.
According to the site, the erotic thriller has leaped over all other films on the site to land itself in the top ten globally, with examples being Germany, Finland, Austria, and Belgium, while landing in the number one spot in Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, and Sweden. For a film that landed a whopping 7% on Rotten Tomatoes from the critics and Sheila O’Malley of Roger Ebert movie reviews called the film “on-the-nose and totally a mess,” landing on the top ten worldwide eight years after release is confusing. Unless you look at the audience score of Rotten Tomatoes and realize that streaming services don’t care about critics, they care about what will stream; fans scored the thriller a 51%, which, even though it wasn’t able to be considered fresh, showed there was a market for the film to justify it on Netflix.
The film follows Zoe Reynard, who shares the perfect life with her husband, Jason, and her children, as she tells the movie’s story through flashbacks to her therapist. According to her, she meets Quinton, an artist her company is about to sign and license his work, eventually beginning a steamy affair. While she is terrified of losing the life she has built, her carnal desires are too much to resist, and even though she tries to break it off with Quinton, she begins a new affair with Corey. The situation turns deadly when Corey and Quinton come face to face, and one kills the other, then turns on Zoe and attempts to kill her too.
Sharon Leal, who played M’gann M’orzz on CW’s Supergirl, takes the lead as the woman navigating her choice between lust and love, while Boris Kodjoe (Resident Evil: Afterlife and Station 19) takes on the role of her struggling husband who eventually comes face to face with his wife’s secret. They are joined in the cast of the erotic thriller by the two secret lovers played by William Levy (Resident Evil: The Final Chapter and The Scent of Passion) as Quinton and Tyson Beckford (Zoolander and Into the Blue) as Corey. Rounding out the cast is Tasha Smith (Why Did I Get Married and Couples Retreat), the therapist who believes Zoe to be a sex addict.
Addicted may not have grabbed the critics and soared to the top of the rating charts, but it proved that while the journalists want more depth to these films, audiences seem content with their shallow entertainment of them. The fact that the film is spiking on Netflix eight years later bodes well for other maligned erotic thrillers like Deep Water and The Voyeurs.
