Netflix isn’t quite the treasure trove of licensed content that it once was, but there are still plenty of hidden gems in the streaming library. Netflix subscribers always seem to find underseen and underappreciated movies that suddenly shoot to the top of the charts, which appears to be the case for the crime thriller The Postcard Killings this week.
Starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan (The Walking Dead) and Famke Janssen (X-Men), The Postcard Killings is based on the 2010 novel The Postcard Killers by James Patterson and Liza Marklund. According to the synopsis, the 2020 movie is about a New York detective who travels to Europe to investigate the murders of his daughter and son-in-law.
With a 24% on Rotten Tomatoes, it’s clear the movie didn’t win critics over. Noel Murray of the Los Angeles Times said it’s “awkwardly pitched between serious art and pulp trash,” while The Hollywood Reporter’s Frank Scheck said the movie adaptation “only serves to further tarnish a cinematic brand already diminished by 2012’s Tyler Perry-starrer Alex Cross.”
In addition to the scores, the movie made just $181,000 at the box office. In fact, it doesn’t seem to have even received a wide release in the United States, so there’s a good chance that no one who is currently streaming the movie on Netflix has seen it before. Honestly, it might as well be a new release, which would explain its meteoric rise in the US.
What’s most surprising about this schlocky crime thriller is that it was directed by Danis Tanović, who wrote and directed No Man’s Land, which was awarded Best Foreign Language Film at the 2002 Academy Awards and the 2002 Golden Globe Awards. The war film was praised by critics and found success at the box office as well.
Nevertheless, The Postcard Killings has finally found an audience on Netflix.
