Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Netflix brings movies out of obscurity


First, I noticed a new movie called Numb on the Netflix new releases page, in the Sci-Fi & Fantasy genre. I like Sci-Fi very much, so clicked through. No one on Netflix has reviewed it yet, and it's been rated only 26 times. That's an obscure movie. I decided to check Numb on IMDB to see if I could learn more. (Can you believe there have been five movies in the last six years named "Numb"?). I scrolled down. Didn't recognize any of the cast or crew. It's done zero at the boxoffice. There's only two user reviews. But at the bottom, a teaser for the Moviemeter (tm) showed that this movie is climbing rapidly out of obscurity at a rate of 37% since last week.

Wanna know why?

I think it's because it's on Netflix's New Releases page. Since the movie was released on DVD a year ago, on April 2, 2006, its highest rank on IMDB was 39,429 on April 23, 2006. It went down to 74259 on Jan 7, 2007. This year, its average rank was 55,269, until this week. Since Netflix has offered the title, its rank has risen to 33,144.

What do you think?

3 comments:

  1. I don't think that's exactly why it's getting more notice. It's recently been playing in independant theatres. That's how I learned about it, and when I did I looked it up to see if it was on Netflix. It wasn't. Then a few weeks later it showed up in Netflix new releases. So, I think the reason you're seeing it get more attention is because it's making the rounds in theatres, not because of Netflix. Even though the movie isn't brand new, it is being treated like a new release.

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  2. Rent it! Is it in your queue?

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