Violent Dylan O’Brien thriller on Netflix “traumatizes” viewers
LionsgateA brutal thriller starring Dylan O’Brien and Michael Keaton has reached number one on the Netflix top 10 chart, and its shocking opening has left viewers “traumatized.”
If you want to take a viewer’s breath away, set the tone early. Don’t build up to bloodshed or heartbreak: deliver it straight away.
Drew Barrymore’s babysitter being gutted like a fish in Scream, Amity Island’s first victim being rag-dolled around the water in Jaws, and Up’s devastating montage; these are some of the most iconic sequences in all of cinema, and they all come within the first few minutes.
In 2017, O’Brien and Keaton teamed up for a movie that was widely dismissed by critics and flopped at the box office – but it came with one hell of an opening. Spoilers to follow…
Dylan O’Brien’s American Assassin climbs Netflix chart
American Assassin is currently number one on Netflix’s top 10 movies in the US. Check out the full chart below:
- American Assassin
- The Vow
- Orion and the Dark
- Ready Player One
- The Super Mario Bros Movie
- Tom & Jerry
- Pacific Rim
- The Greatest Night in Pop
- Fury
- X
The film opens on a beach in Spain, where Mitch Rapp (O’Brien) proposes to his girlfriend. She says yes, so he goes to the bar to get some drinks. Moments later, a jihadist terrorist cell storms the resort and opens fire on everyone there – including his fiancée, who’s murdered right in front of him.
It’s incredibly graphic, with the scene showing several people torn apart by bullets as they try to escape. “That one scene in American Assassin traumatized me so much I can’t stop thinking about it,” one user tweeted. “American Assassin’s beginning literally traumatized me, I cannot not think about it everyday,” another wrote.
Yet, despite its 34% score on Rotten Tomatoes, Netflix viewers are loving it. “American Assassin might be one of my top 5 favorite movies ever. Sh*t is damn near perfectly written with the acting to match. One movie I can watch over and over,” one user wrote.
“American Assassin is top tier,” another posted. “American Assassin 10/10,” a third wrote. “It’s a shame they never made more Mitch Rapp movies beyond #AmericanAssassin. So much material to make a series of movies out of,” a fourth tweeted.