Oscar-Winning Holocaust Drama With 93% Rotten Tomatoes Score Tops Streaming Charts

Summary

• The Zone of Interest
  is the most popular movie available on streaming for the week of April 4-10, according to new data.
• The Jonathan Glazer movie earned positive reviews from critics, who praised its novel approach to exploring the horrors of the Holocaust.
• Critical acclaim and awards performance has been crucial to the film’s succcess given its more non-traditional storytelling.

The Zone of Interest holds the top spot on a new list ranking the most popular streaming titles. Directed by Jonathan Glazer, the film hit theaters last December, following Auschwitz commandant Rudolph Höss (Christian Friedel) and his family as they live their lives next to a concentration camp during World War II. The Zone of Interest reviews widely praised the film, and the movie would go on to be nominated for five Oscars, winning for Best International Feature Film and Best Sound.

New streaming data from Realgood now reveals that The Zone of Interest was the number one most popular movie on streaming for the week of April 4 – 10. The Holocaust drama beats the likes of Ripley, A Gentleman in Moscow, and Sugar, among other titles. Check out the full top 10 list below:

Realgood assembles its top 10 chart by monitoring over 20 million streaming decisions every month across every major streaming platform. The Zone of Interest‘s streaming victory comes only 10 days after the film became available on Max.

The Zone Of Interest’s Positive Reception Explained

Why The Holocaust Drama Has Been So Popular

The Zone of Interest premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last year, with reactions out of the screening already very positive. The response has generally praised just how unsettling the film is, with the story keeping the horrific day-to-day life of the Auschwitz prisoners ever-present in the background. The Zone of Interest, ultimately, is about a more mundane form of evil and the complicity that was necessary for this evil to flourish.

While not as high as the 93% critics’ score, The Zone of Interest‘s audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is 78%. The responses on Metacritic are similar, with the critics’ score sitting at 92 and the audience score at 7.4 out of 10. The Zone of Interest has also been a modest box office success, ending its run with $43.9 million worldwide. Instead of word-of-mouth, positive reviews and awards-performance have undoubtedly been the main factors in the film’s success given the movie’s subject matter, lack of conventional narrative, and the haunting Zone of Interest ending.

Despite the positive reviews for The Zone of Interest, Glazer recently found himself at the center of some controversy when the ambiguity of his Oscars’ acceptance speech about the current Israel-Hamas conflict resulted in some backlash. Many Jewish actors, including Joaquin Phoenix, have since spoken out in support of Glazer, but it’s possible that the controversy has actually helped put The Zone of Interest on more people’s radar. This, too, could have contributed to its recent streaming victory.

Source: Realgood