“Animal” is an Indian Hindi-language film from director Sandeep Reddy Vanga, whose previous two movies, 2017’s “Arjun Reddy” and 2019’s “Kabir Singh” (2019), were hugely successful at the Indian box office. As was “Animal,” which tells the story of a man who embarks on a brutal revenge mission after an assassination attempt on his estranged father. But this Bollywood blockbuster is notable for the sheer level of unrelenting brutality meted out by its protagonist, played by Ranbir Kapoor in a role that the Guardian called “one of the vilest protagonists in cinema history.”
Still, that hasn’t stopped Netflixers from outright lapping up this Indian actioner. According to streaming data aggregator FlixPatrol, “Animal” arrived on Netflix on January 26, 2024, and almost immediately hit the top 10 charts in 25 countries around the world. As of January 27, the film had hit the Netflix top 10 in all but two of those countries, and as of January 30, is number one in nine of those markets. More impressive still, “Animal” has been number one in six of those countries since it debuted on the service, including in Oman, the United Arab Emirates, and its native India.
But the film has also managed to court viewers in a handful of western countries, including New Zealand where it currently sits at number five on the Netflix top 10, and the United Kingdom, where it’s currently at number seven after having slipped from the number five spot. It should be noted that Netflix viewing metrics aren’t the most transparent, and the Top 10 website was basically launched to distract from that fact. But there’s no denying audiences are clearly quite taken by “Animal” and its more than 3 hours of non-stop bloodshed.