Thanks entirely to circumstances of its own making, it’s a lot more surprising when a Netflix original boasting an intriguing conceit and a star-studded cast doesn’t get greeted apathetically by critics, but Reptile is not one of the concerningly small few to have bucked the trend.
To be fair, we should have been expecting such a response given that the first reactions to its premiere last month were a million miles away from being universally enthusiastic, with the hard-boiled crime thriller having since slipped all the way down to a decidedly tepid 43 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Of course, because it’s a Netflix exclusive that boasts Benicio Del Toro, Justin Timberlake, Alicia Silverstone, and Michael Pitt among its ensemble, co-writer and director Grant Singer’s feature has inevitably ended up as one of the biggest hits around. Per FlixPatrol, Reptile has overcome its underwhelming reviews to scope out a Top 10 spot in 93 countries globally, which still hasn’t been enough to see it reach the summit of the charts when Spanish-language sensation Nowhere debuted on the very same day.
The narrative focuses on the after-effects of a brutal murder, with a grizzled detective stumbling into a conspiracy when he tries to untangle an increasingly complex case, a setup that’s been Netflix’s bread and butter for a while. Once again, it doesn’t matter what the critics think, so long as the platform is diving headlong into death, disrepair, and danger with a smattering of recognizable names and faces along for the ride.