Netflix’s movie catalog has transformed in recent years into an ever-expanding collection of cinematic content. Not only because of its variety, but also because of the platform’s ability to bring together all kinds of genres, languages and visions of current cinema. As a showcase for independent hardware, Netflix has also proven over the past five years that streaming is the best place for quirky cinema. In particular, one that emphasizes disturbing, surprising or strange stories
Of course, this is an obvious advantage. The platform was proposed not only to maintain a selection of content that is always being renewed, but also to explore new options. The result is an unusual journey through a type of cinema that rarely reaches theaters. Or that at least, until a decade ago, it was condemned to anonymity or unequal evaluation as works of worship. But Netflix films have managed to get a good part of their lists and new additions to celebrate the most curious of the seventh art. Also, his wildest and sometimes incomprehensible side.
We leave you with a selection of five films to celebrate the rare, unique and dreamlike cinema that you can find in the list of Netflix films. From stunning cinematic artwork to intimate and sometimes meaningless glimpses. A visit to the less traveled side of the world of great stories.
What did Jack do?
Always disconcerting and surprising, David Lynch creates in this film on Netflix one of his most singular works. Which is already a considerable point if we take into account the fact that the director’s career is based on the enigmatic and the absurd. On this occasion, he decides to explore what appears to be a singular variant of film noir. questioning a monkey. And he does it, for 17 minutes, in a kind of crazy dialogue about an imaginary murder. But in addition, Lynch plays with the codes of film noir while combining a kind of extravagant parody between a procedural and his usual style on the surrealist.
The result is an inexplicable journey that equal parts laughter and intrigue. Lynch was never too lavish in explaining his obsessions, but in What did Jack do? there is a complete collapse of language. But instead of appearing disconcerting, the short film ends up being a roadmap to inexplicable spaces of the cinematic. Lynch, who also stars in this film on Netflix, creates the illusion of some notion of the unexplainable. But at the same time, it presents itself as a happy experiment on rarity as the essential meaning of an enigmatic cinematographic proposal.
Sure, Lynch’s filmography gives for that and a bit more. But above all, in this short film, the director strives to delve into the roots of the surreal. A rare visual document that is worth seeing.
I don’t feel comfortable in this world anymore
This Netflix film about an assault, a man with a rat tail and revenge is one of the most absurd and curious you will find on the platform. It’s a story in which violence is an excuse to unite the unequal parts of something else widely feared as a concept. But in reality, it is an exploration of human nature starting from the inexplicable. And while it may seem like a rarity just to use meaningless visual codes, is actually a solid plot experience.
However, the main emphasis of the film is to analyze the limits of ultra-violence and humanity. Also about revenge and fear, the chaotic and how we perceive the singular. So, disparate topics can coincide in a single argument? They do so to the extent that the director manages to create a perception of the strange as a common thread towards disturbing places in the human mind. Even more, when the path leads to the way in which pain, exclusion and the search for answers are linked to create a discourse on the human of enormous depth.
None of this convinces you? What if we told you that Elijah Wood himself plays one of the most confusing roles of his career in film?
Velvet circular saw
Art and the supernatural have often intermingled in peculiar and very strange ways for much of the history of cinema. Director Dan Gilroy takes the premise and turns it into something more mundane, but certainly intriguing. Velvet circular saw is a stranger hybrid between comedy, criticism, slasher and supernatural horror. All seasoned with a good deal of art as a hypothesis of collective identity. With all its weight as a cynical version of the art world, it questions subjects as disparate as death and contemporary uprooting.
The Netflix movie doesn’t make the mistake of taking itself seriously and that’s one of its strengths. Gilroy’s take on the perception of art as part of the need for intellectual commerce is harsh, but it’s also funny. It is also strange on several levels. The characters go from place to place, laughing, flirting with each other, showing off their knowledge, and ultimately, dying amid gruesome bloody scenes. As if that were not enough, the supernatural appears in brief brushstrokes.
All of this makes it clear that behind the sleek surface of artists, sellers, buyers and galleries lies a twisted and disturbing version of reality. The director does not lavish himself too much on explanations and experiments in a somewhat dual discourse on the origin of the inexplicable: was it born of the artistic? Of his desecration? From his indirect perception of human nature?
Does such a mixture work? In his best moments, he does. Another good reason to give the film a chance? A disconcerting Jake Gyllenhaal with John Malkovich.
I never died
The story of an immortal philosopher who, in turn, is a “one-man army” is one of the most outlandish things in the Netflix movie catalog. Perhaps it is due to the combination of action and existential dramas, dilemmas of fatherhood and ultra-violence. All this within the general idea that human life can become all the more unbearable the longer it is. And even stranger, that the perception of identity becomes more complicated, meaningless and fickle when the only immortal on earth also tries to understand fatherhood from his long existence.
Such a mixture of elements will sooner or later fail. In fact, it fails in its first half hour, but eventually finds an extravagant pace backed by belief in goodness. Very simple for a film that tries to reflect on immortality on earth, the values of the spirit and also includes violence in generous doses? This is not the case when the character begins a journey in search of their identity and discovers that living forever is more than just an attribute of time. And yes, one more related to the total experience of being a man in the midst of a changing world around him.
But finally, this is an action movie. And any glimpse of the inexplicable nature of its central character is lost in the gunshots and punches. Either way, the film continues to surprise, unpredictably and, ultimately, heartbreaking in all its weirdness. A rare pearl for lovers of the absurd on Netflix.
Circle
It could be called the insane and monstrous scale version of The squid game. When fifty strangers wake up in a gigantic and dangerous room without knowing how they got there, they must survive at the cost of the lives of others. The Netflix movie makes visual decisions that are irreverent and more often than not, to tell the feeling of claustrophobia and fear that surrounds it. There will therefore be aerial shots, vertical falls without the slightest sense, a subjective camera which passes to the objective without explanation.
On the other hand, the plot leaves the sense of urgency as of a tragedy waiting to happen. But really, the weirdest thing is her ability to evade traps and cliches. It is a complicated, essential and insane combination of good and evil that will surprise you in its most difficult moments.
