Netflix's New Chart-Topping Drama Movie Has a Near-Perfect Rotten Tomatoes Rating
Netflix is continuing to find success with its original programming. The streamer's newest drama film, Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Lost Daughter, is earning plenty of praise from critics, even receiving a near-perfect Rotten Tomatoes score. The film is just the latest Netflix title to receive a high score on the ratings site and one of Netflix's final films of 2021 to reach that height.
Written and directed by Gyllenhaal in her feature directorial debut, and based on Elena Ferrante's novel of the same name, The Lost Daughter follows Leda, whose quiet seaside vacation takes an unsettling turn when she becomes consumed with a young mother and daughter as she watches them on the beach. The mother and daughter awaken memories from her past, and "she is forced to face the unconventional choices she made as a young mother and their consequences." The film stars Olivia Colman, Dakota Johnson, Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Dagmara Domińczyk, Jack Farthing, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, with Peter Sarsgaard, and Ed Harris.
The film, which has already won a number of awards, has become a critics' favorite. On Rotten Tomatoes, critics have given the movie a 95% fresh rating, a number aggregated from a whopping 169 reviews. The critic's consensus reads, "a strikingly assured debut for writer-director Maggie Gyllenhaal, The Lost Daughter unites a brilliant cast in service of a daringly ambitious story." Robert Daniels wrote for Polygon that The Lost Daughter is "a sharply crafted, clear-eyed interrogation of less-than-likable parents" that "ebbs and flows on the strength of this reality, along with a few immense performers from its veteran ensemble."
The news isn't all good, though, because while The Lost Daughter has clearly won over critics, the same cannot be said for the audience. The film's Rotten Tomatoes audience score currently sits at an abysmal 44%, a number that is a far cry from its 95% Tomatometer approval ratings. One viewer wrote that they were "actually upset that I wasted my time watching this movie" as another, in a scathing review, dubbed the film "plodding, pretentious, plotless and utterly pointless," adding that The Lost Daughter "certainly ruined 2 hours and 39 minutes of my life."
Regardless of its poor audience score, enough people have pressed play on The Lost Daughter to help cement its place on the streaming charts. The film currently ranks as the No. 6 most popular movie on the Netflix U.S. platform, with Flixpatrol data revealing that the movie ranked as the second most popular movie on Netflix in the world as of Wednesday, Jan. 5. You can weigh in on the debate by streaming The Lost Daughter now on Netflix.