The Mystery Thriller Flop Defying Odds And Dominating Netflix

Streaming services provide all sorts of opportunities to discover movies that you've never heard of. They're also great for sampling some cool foreign flicks in the comfort of your own home. Oh, and of course, Netflix is also a great way to scratch that bad movie itch, on those occasions when you secretly want to see something that you know viewers dislike. 

Where things get really strange is when a movie is a virtual unknown, foreign, and has bad audience reviews. Sure, you might be willing to give that trifecta a go, just for the experience of it, but you wouldn't necessarily expect everyone — or anyone, really — to do the same. Yet, somehow, that has just happened. Precisely such a movie is happily riding the upper echelons of Netflix's Top ten most-watched movies, despite the fact that it seems like a dud, at least on paper. What is this strange movie, and what dark secrets allow it to be so popular despite all evidence to the contrary? 

Let's take a look at the mystery thriller flop that is defying all the odds and dominating Netflix.

Red Dot is a Swedish thriller about a young couple, Nadja (Nanna Blondell) and David (Anastasious Soulis), who head out to the vast, frozen swathes of Northern Sweden in an effort to reconnect and celebrate Nadja's pregnancy. Unfortunately, their nice getaway trip soon becomes a harsh survival movie, thanks to the titular red dot — an assailant with a laser-sighted rifle who starts stalking the pair. 

Red Dot is an absolutely relentless, humorless movie, which works well in the context — after all, would you be cracking wise if you were camping out in the frozen wilderness and a sniper was hunting you? However, while there is certainly no arguing that it is a bona fide Netflix hit, something about it seems to be turning viewers off, once they've gotten to the end. The movie's IMDb user rating is a meager 5.4, and its Rotten Tomatoes audience score is an extremely rough 20 percent. What few critics have reviewed it at this point tend to be slightly more merciful, with sites like The Review Geek giving it a middling 6.5/10. So in this case, viewers are even more unforgiving than the critics.

Still, despite the fact that audiences sure seem to dislike the movie, something about Red Dot seems to resonate with viewers enough to give it such a high Netflix ranking. Perhaps we all need a touch of grim, Swedish wilderness in our lives every once in a while. 

Curious to see for yourself? Red Dot is now streaming on Netflix.