Five unbelievable Netflix movies that somehow actually exist
When Netflix transitioned from mailing people DVDs to allowing users to stream movies and TV shows at just the click of a few buttons (and a paid subscription, of course), it actually took the platform a few years to begin making original content.
In 2013, Netflix’s first original show, House of Cards, was released, and two years later, their first original movie, Beasts of No Nation, debuted on the site, and since then, they’ve released everything from Velvet Buzzsaw and KPop Demon Hunters to The Kissing Booth and The Irishman.
But with every good – even Oscar-winning – movie that Netflix has been responsible for, they’ve also released some absolute drivel with premises so bizarre that it’s hard to believe that they actually exist. Morally dubious erotic movies, terrible biopics, and cringe-inducing comedies with the most nonsensical plots you can think of can all be found on Netflix. Don’t waste your time on them.
Or maybe you should. If you want something to put on as you try to fall asleep, or perhaps something to watch with friends when you’re all far from sober, then look no further than these five awful Netflix original movies that, at this rate, would probably make more sense if they’d been written by ChatGPT. And that’s saying something.
Five Netflix movies you won’t believe are actually real:
‘Diana: The Musical’ (Christopher Ashley, 2021)
Now, I don’t mean to be insensitive, but Diana: The Musical is an absolute car crash. Originally penned by David Bryan and Joe DiPietro, the musical was first performed in San Diego before somehow making it to Broadway, with a filmed version of one of the productions eventually recorded as a Netflix Original. It’s even worse than you could possibly imagine. Despite being wildly tone-deaf, it’s just plain awful.
You only need to watch a clip of ‘This Is How Your People Dance’ to see just how bad – and unbelievable – it really is, which is why it’s safe to say Netflix must have agreed to make an official recording of the show, knowing that people would only watch it to laugh… With terrible songs, terrible choreography, and even a dramatisation of Diana’s tragic end, it’s incredible that such a production ever got greenlit.
‘Naked’ (Michael Tiddes, 2017)
In 1993, Groundhog Day was released to acclaim, becoming a beloved Bill Murray comedy – a classic, and then, seven years later, a Swedish rip-off called Naken emerged, only the main drama of this one revolved around a man stuck in a time loop while naked on his wedding day… Of course, Netflix got its paws on this version, remaking it in 2017 as Naked, with Marlon Wayans starring as a man who wakes up in a lift fully naked, forced to relive the moment over and over.
Wayans has never been the height of cinematic sophistication, but come on – there’s not much lower you can go than spending most of the runtime with your cheeks out, delivering a lazy remake of a movie that was panned the first time around.
‘Hillbilly Elegy’ (Ron Howard, 2020)
I find it really hard to believe that Hillbilly Elegy exists. Directed by the legendary Ron Howard, the movie is based on Republican Vice President JD Vance’s memoir of the same name, with Amy Adams playing his mother, and Glenn Close playing his grandmother… Yes, you read all of that right. Close even earned an Academy Award nomination for her performance.
The movie was criticised as being poverty porn and Oscar bait, but the sheer fact that the movie is bad isn’t why it’s on this list, it’s the very concept of a Ron Howard-directed movie about a JD Vance memoir that I find tricky to wrap my head around – why would you waste time making a movie about that evil man, and while he might not have risen within the political sphere at this point in time, you don’t simply turn into such a hideous right-winger overnight.
‘365 Days: This Day’ and ‘The Next 365 Days’ (Barbara Białowąs and Tomasz Mandes, 2022)
Erotic thrillers aren’t exactly a genre you go into expecting a great display of morality, but no one could defend 365 Days when it was released in 2020, which sees a man kidnap a woman and force her to fall in love with him, and she actually marries him in spite of his abuse.
Somehow, the Polish movie was viewed so many times when it was made available on Netflix that the streaming service ordered two sequels, with 365 Days: This Day and The Next 365 Days both coming in 2022.
The plots of both are ridiculous – after Laura marries her captor in the first sequel, she runs off with a gardener named Nacho, who has some mafia boss connections, while a twin mix-up drives a lot of the drama – and in The Next 365 Days, the love triangle between Laura, Massimo and Nacho continues, with plenty of unnecessary sex scenes, including jungle fantasies, orgies involving massive fake breasts, and imaginary threesomes… The fact that these movies get so many views is unbelievable.
‘We Have A Ghost’ (Christopher Landon, 2023)
The Stranger Things cheque must’ve been running a bit thin on the ground when David Harbour accepted the role of a spectre in We Have a Ghost, a supernatural comedy from Christopher Landon that is genuinely awful, but listen to the premise.
A family moves into a house that needs a lot of work, only to discover a lonely ghost lurking in the attic, played by Harbour, resulting in viral stardom – then the CIA gets involved as the family tries to figure out how the ghost died, but what’s more scary are the dire visual effects… It looks atrocious, Netflix really will pummel their money into any old crap, and it’s frightening how many actors willingly give themselves to such bad movies.
