It’s Halloween week, and every streaming addict is looking to Netflix and chills with a good old-fashioned scarefest to make the most of their subscription this spooky season. It wouldn’t be Halloween without a good shock, though, and this time said shock is that horror monarch Stephen King has been displaced in the number one slot in the charts.
As per information collated by ReelGood, the most recent King adaptation to hit screens — Max’s long-delayed Salem’s Lot remake — only managed to bump its way up into the bronze medal position on the most-watched top 10 list (across all the major streaming platforms) for the week beginning Oct. 16. In the ranking combining both movies and TV shows, the second place spot is taken by Disclaimer, Apple’s psychological thriller miniseries from the mind of Alfonso Cuarón and starring Cate Blanchett.
That’s a lot of star power to occupy just the runner-up slots on the chart, so what holds more attraction to viewers looking for some Halloweentertainment this October? Netflix takes the win on this one, thanks to its surprise sleeper hit It’s What’s Inside.
You have to watch this body-swapping sleeper hit before spooky season is up
According to ReelGood, the most-watched title on all of streaming across both movies and TV for the week beginning Oct. 16 was It’s What’s Inside, a film for which the term “mind-bending” was invented.
In the ambitious genre-blending outing, officially classified as a “science fiction comedy horror,” a group of estranged college friends reunite for a wild party the night before one of them gets married. One of their number, it turns out, has become a successful tech bro who has invented a device which allows users to swap bodies with each other. When the gang try it out, they discover that using such a machine while high, drunk, and with all kinds of old resentments and attractions rekindled, is a really, really bad idea.
The bizarre lovechild of Bodies Bodies Bodies and Freaky Friday, It’s What’s Inside is a witty, gripping suspense-filled thriller. It might be a bit light on gore or jump-scares if that’s what you’re after, but it is what few entries in its genre truly are: unpredictable. As the characters hop from body to body, it’s often unclear who is who and who will do what next as a powder-keg of chaotic emotions grows more and more volatile across the lean 100-minute runtime.
From first-time director Greg Jardin, the Netflix original doesn’t have any what you might call marquee names in its cast — arguably the most recognizable is Fear the Walking Dead‘s Alycia Debnam-Carey, as self-absorbed Instagram influencer Nikki — but the ensemble is uniformly excellent as they all get to play each other’s characters and reveal new shades to their own. In some ways, it’s surprising that the film’s lack of star power could still overtake the likes of King and Blanchett on the charts. It just goes to show you it’s not the A-list talent attached that matters, it’s what’s inside that counts.
