After it failed to garner any traction at the box office, a 2024 Blumhouse movie is finding renewed success on Netflix. The indie studio best known for their horror output has enjoyed something of a mixed bag in the past couple of years when it’s come to both the critical and commercial reception to their movies. For every record-breaking M3GAN and Five Nights at Freddy’s, there’s also been a near-franchise-destroying The Exorcist: Believer and lackluster Halloween Ends.
2024, in particular, has been something of a rockier year for Blumhouse. Having hoped to recapture the January release success of M3GAN, the horror short adaptation of Night Swim proved to be a critical misfire, albeit a modest box office success. The studio followed it up with four other releases, including the similarly panned Imaginary and the James McAvoy-starring English-language remake of Speak No Evi l, which was a critical and commercial hit. There was one release among the studio’s 2024 schedule, though, that nearly marked a new low for Blumhouse, but is finding a new kind of success.
AfrAId Is Starting Off High On Netflix’s Charts
The Movie Hit A Box Office Low For Blumhouse
Written and directed by Oscar nominee Chris Weitz, AfrAId centers on a family who are invited to participate in a trial run for a new smart home artificial intelligence program named AIA, only for it to start spiraling out of control and taking over their lives. Led by John Cho, Katherine Waterston, Havana Rose Liu and Keith Carradine, the movie garnered largely negative reviews from critics. AfrAId was also a box office disappointment, marking Blumhouse’s lowest opening weekend at the box office and only grossing $12.9 million against its $12 million production budget.
Now, upon making its streaming debut, AfrAId is finding success on Netflix. The 2024 Blumhouse movie currently sits at No. 9 on the platform, being situated just ahead of 2015’s Minions. In addition to landing on Netflix’s Top 10, the movie is also the only horror title ranking so high at the time of writing, with the rest of the chart including Lindsay Lohan’s Our Little Secret, Skydance’s Spellbound, Chad Michael Murray’s The Merry Gentlemen, Kurt Russell’s The Christmas Chronicles, Illumination’s The Secret Life of Pets, Lacey Chabert’s Hot Frosty, Owen Wilson’s Father Figures and Illumination’s Sing.
Our Take On AfrAId’s Streaming Success
It May Not Last Much Longer
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AfrAId’s success on streaming certainly doesn’t come as much of a surprise. The movie’s fresh debut on Netflix clearly helped put new eyes on it, though Blumhouse is renowned for having a variety of movies find success on streaming, regardless of how they did in theaters. Night Swim is one such example from Blumhouse’s 2024 slate, and was helped in part by Stephen King’s defense of the movie.
Related All 12 Upcoming Blumhouse Horror Movies Explained Blumhouse is a leader in the horror genre, so it is particularly exciting that the production company has 12 new movies premiering in the near future.
That being said, AfrAId’s longevity on streaming may not be as strong as its debut outing indicates. The arrival of the Christmas season is already evident by half of Netflix’s other titles on the top chart, and unless audiences start spreading positive things about the Blumhouse horror movie, it seems unlikely that it will stay in the Top 10 much longer. Considering AfrAId’s audience score is 51% on Rotten Tomatoes, it’s not entirely out of the realm of possibility for it to get some defenders, but I don’t see it happening.
Source: Netflix
