If you want to enjoy a solid disaster movie starring Gerard Butler that balances some impressive visual effects with a grounded story about keeping your family together in the midst of a catastrophic event, then shell out and purchase Greenland on VOD or wait for it to arrive on HBO Max next month. Reuniting with Angel Has Fallen director Ric Roman Waugh, Greenland is the sort of heightened genre fare that allows the rugged Scotsman to do his best work and further solidify a reputation as one of mid-budget cinema’s most reliable talents.
However, if you want to put yourself through a terrible disaster pic starring Gerard Butler that comes off like a Roland Emmerich fan film made on a blockbuster budget, then Geostorm is now on Netflix. Dean Devlin’s feature debut went so badly that he was kicked off the production for reshoots and replaced by the director of 1995’s infamous Sylvester Stallone dud Judge Dredd, which tells you all you need to know about the quality of the finished product.
It may have scored poor reviews and tanked at the box office, but Geostorm has been dominating Netflix’s Top 10 most-watched list for the last week or so, and is still the eighth most popular title in the streaming service’s content library around the world. The platform has famously had some real stinkers find a second life once they’ve been made accessible at the push of a button to over 190 million customers, and this is just the latest in a long line of surprising hits on the site.
Imagine a cross between Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow without even a shred of originality, inventiveness or entertainment, and you’ve got Geostorm in a nutshell, but for some reason, Netflix subscribers just can’t seem to get enough of it.