Halloween comes early on Netflix with the streamer’s unhinged new slasher leaving a trail of bodies on the Top 10 in 80 countries

There’s no timetable on when you can enjoy horror – as evidenced by the genre’s all-seasons popularity – but the biggest streaming service in the business dropping a brand new slasher weeks before the scariest day on the calendar was a tactical move as shrewd as it was obvious, with The Conference already one of Netflix’s biggest hits.

Per FlixPatrol, the Swedish original has debuted as the most-watched new movie on the content library, arriving at fifth place on the global charts by way of a Top 10 placing in 80 countries around the world. In addition, it snagged the number one spot in 11 of them, and its proximity to Halloween should ensure that it hangs around the upper echelons for a while yet.

A fairly humdrum setup finds a group of municipal employees attending one of those team-building conferences everyone in the corporate world hates so much, only for salacious gossip, spicy rumors, and rumblings of corruption to sweep through the attendees. If that wasn’t enough, a mysterious masked murderer also happens to be among their number, dropping bodies with reckless abandon by taking out the attendees one by one.

Packing a solid 83 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, The Conference hasn’t been greeted quite as enthusiastically be audiences given its bang-average 50 percent user score, but a streaming-only slasher premiering in October is going to be surefire hit regardless of whether it’s trash or treasure. There’s only one way to find out for sure, though, and that’s exactly what subscribers have been doing.