Adam Sandler Movie Returns to Netflix Top 10 Despite Bad Reviews

Adam Sandler’s horror-comedy film Hubie Halloween is back in Netflix’s Top 10 list this weekend despite its generally poor reviews. The movie stars Sandler as a deli worker who is generally mocked by the town for his stupidity, but he takes it upon himself to be the “Halloween Helper” one night per year. While many critics and viewers mocked the movie last fall, it seems like they’re revisiting it as the season draws to a close.

Hubie Halloween is listed at number 4 on Netflix’s “Top 10 Movies” list at the time of this writing. It likely doesn’t hurt that it’s a Netflix Original Film, and that Netflix has been promoting it along with other Halloween-themed content in its app for the last couple of weeks. Still, many social media commenters were amused on Sunday to see this critical flop back in the queue. Some defenders of the film even speculated that its critics had overstated their hatred of it.

“I did a Hubie Halloween rewatch and can confirm, it’s still terrible,” one person tweeted this week. Another countered: “Hubie Halloween is an absolute god-tier Halloween movie,” while a third wrote: “Hubie Halloween is an elite spooky season film.”

At the time of this writing, Hubie Halloween has a 52 percent score on the Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer,” based on 82 reviews from trusted professional critics. It has an even lower 43 percent score among audience members, based on over 1,000 user-submitted ratings. Many viewers agreed that the movie appealed most to nostalgic fans of Sandler’s older movies, and not so much to newcomers.

It’s also worth noting that many fans believe Hubie Halloween is itself a kind of meta-joke played on the movie industry. This is because back in 2020, Sandler got some serious critical acclaim for his performance in Uncut Gems, and there was even Oscar buzz around his performance. During his press tour for that award season, Sandler made a joking threat in an interview with Howard Stern.

“If I don’t get it, I’m going to f-ing come back and do one [movie] again that is so bad on purpose just to make you all pay. That’s how I get them,” Sandler said. In the end, he wasn’t even nominated for his performance in Uncut Gems, and fans couldn’t help but note that Hubie Halloween was the very next film he released.

For better or worse, it seems that Hubie Halloween will come back around every October, forcing fans to reckon with their mixed feelings about it all over again. The film is streaming now on Netflix, as is Uncut Gems.