An intense action thriller weaponizes the sound barrier to make an explosive impact on streaming

The high concept action thriller has been one of the industry’s favorite storytelling tools for decades, leading to an outpouring of movies arriving each and every year that can be sold and marketed on the back of a simple elevator pitch that neatly surmises the premise. While the consistency is all over the place, last year’s Decibel proved that the right creative team is always capable of freshening up a staple formula.

Anyone with even a passing interest in high-octane tales that feature an out of their depth protagonist attempting to overcome a nefarious adversary with designs on causing catastrophic damage will have seen at least a handful of films predicated on a rogue terrorist threatening to detonate a string of explosives as part of a cat-and-mouse game.

However, Decibel flips the script by having bombs designed take control of an entire urban area utilizing devices that are only detonated when a certain volume level is reached. As a result, Kim Rae-won’s submarine commander is forced to race around the city trying to keep heavily-populated areas as quiet as possible – or at the very least detonate them before things get too loud in more ways than one – which is an intriguing twist on the setup.

With such an eye-catching logline, it was inevitable that co-writer and director Hwang In-ho’s feature would capture the attention of Netflix subscribers as they desperately search through the vast content library in search of a pulse-pounding genre film worthy of their time. Sure enough, Decibel has blasted through the streaming sound barrier to become one of the platform’s most-watched films per FlixPatrol, leaving a trail of debris and destruction in its wake.