(Credit: Netflix)
There are thousands of movies on Netflix, and every week I monitor what's getting the the most views on the streaming service and put together some recommendations for you. I use a variety of metrics like popularity, ratings on IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes, and my Letterboxd watchlist to surface four flicks every week. Everybody's talking about The Crash this week, so watch it, then some other movies about romance gone wrong and teens out of control.
The Crash
The most buzzed-about movie on Netflix, both in the US and globally, is The Crash, an intense documentary about a totally inexplicable crime. In July 2022, Mackenzie Shirilla was driving her boyfriend and their friend home from a party when she unexpectedly accelerated and crashed into a brick wall, killing both passengers. Mackenzie said that she passed out behind the wheel, but further investigation told a very different story.
- Director: Gareth Johnson
- Genre: Documentary
- Rating: TV-MA
- IMDB Rating: 6.6/10
What Jennifer Did
Don't have your fill of duplicity? Last year's What Jennifer Did has some parallels with The Crash that are hard to ignore. In 2010, Jennifer Pan called 911, telling the operator that her parents had been shot by masked gunmen who had broken into her house and tied her up. As police delved deeper into her story, inconsistencies started to emerge that painted Jennifer's phone call and her relationship with her parents in a much darker light.
- Director: Jenny Popplewell
- Stars: Jennifer Pan, Bill Courtice, Alan Cooke
- Genre: Documentary
- Rating: TV-14
- IMDb Rating: 6.1/10
Lover Stalker Killer
The drama in The Crash centers on a relationship that's on the outs, so Lover Stalker Killer might scratch the same itch. This twisted documentary follows auto mechanic Dave Kroupa as he explores online dating for the first time, matching with two different women and casually dating them both while he figures things out. But when one of them mysteriously disappears, his life becomes unexpectedly more intense, as she subjects him to four years of harassment from afar... or does she?
- Directors: Sam Hobkinson
- Stars: Dave Kroupa, Nancy Raney, Chris LeGrow
- Genre: Documentary
- Rating: TV-MA
- IMDb Rating: 7.0/10
Untamed Royals
Let's swerve away from documentaries for our final entry with a fictional take on amoral teens ruining lives. Untamed Royals is a Mexican film that zeroes in on a group of wealthy adolescents who provoke each other into increasingly cruel and violent acts, avoiding any accountability as they rip off their own families. It's a rough watch, and not terribly subtle, but the performances are solid, and it moves at a breakneck pace.
- Directors: Humberto Hinojosa Ozcariz
- Stars: Juan Pablo Fuentes Acevedo, Fernando Cattori, Ximena Lamadrid
- Genre: Drama
- Rating: TV-MA
- IMDb Rating: 4.6/10
Want to see everything that's new on Netflix this month? We've got you covered.