Rather improbably, Netflix’s Mexican erotic thriller Desire (Deseo) is the number one streaming movie in the world. This is despite the fact that, like basically all erotic thrillers, it’s terrible. And the movie’s success is pretty bad news for all of us, since it means that streaming platforms will continue to commission more and more of them.
And, frankly, why wouldn’t they? These platforms have to make money, which means giving people what they want, even if they might not admit they want it in polite company, and based on the viewing figures, this is what people want. They don’t want prestige entertainment, not really. They want indulgent, turn-your-brain-off – and perhaps take-your-pants-down – genre movies that don’t require any real effort to consume, dressed up as serious arthouse flicks.
The Quality Paradox
There’s no arguing with results. According to FlixPatrol, as of July 20, Desire is the most popular streaming movie in the world by a landslide, beating out second place, Kenneth Branagh’s all-start adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile, by more than double the amount of “popularity points”, which is the internal metric that the site uses to denote success based on aggregating daily Top 10 ranking charts from over 900 streaming services across more than 160 countries.
Meanwhile, nobody actually likes the movie. On Rotten Tomatoes, there aren’t enough critic reviews to create a consensus, but both of the two on there – one of them being mine – are “Rotten”. There aren’t enough audience reactions for a proper score either, but of the three published, two rate the movie 0.5 and 1.5 stars, respectively. On IMDb, the movie has a score of 4.3/10 based on 761 reviews, and on Letterboxd, Desire clocks in at 2.3/5 based on 2787 reviews.
How does a movie about a dysfunctional family and a murdered swim coach become the most-watched movie in the entire world, despite being rubbish? Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the era of algorithmically engineered mainstream trash.
The Great Equalizer
The genius of streaming is that it doesn’t really filter for quality. Recommendations are tailored based on popularity and user interest. If something does numbers, it will, one way or another, find its way into your feed. These movies are Trojan horses, designed to sneak low-brow trash into your living room under the guise of prestige art.
This is why they always look like proper movies. You can complain about all kinds of things when it comes to Desire, but you can’t really complain about how it looks. Director Teresa Simone uses a lot of neat shots and an aesthetically pleasing architectural style to create equivalence between this and a proper movie. Viewers don’t feel like they’re compromising their tastes to check it out. And once they’re in, they can’t leave.
Netflix – and other platforms, obviously – only need two things to control the market. One is gloss. The other is raw watch hours being their primary promotional metric. The trashy erotic thriller isn’t going anywhere.
Erotica Is Perfectly Suited To Your Living Room
The wild mainstream success of erotic content across all media – from the record-breaking success of the 50 Shades franchise in print to its big-screen adaptations, and the weaponisation of general horniness for the streaming era in stuff like 365 Days and Dark Desire – proves that people are into this kind of thing. And why not? It’s a deeply human thing to be interested in sex and sexual content, especially if it’s lightly taboo.
However, buying a book or a movie ticket to consume these things publicly is a tougher proposition than lounging around on your couch and watching things in the comfort of your own home. Streaming erases the judgemental social barrier that keeps dodgy subjects out of the mainstream, at least in their most salacious forms, allowing people’s true interests to be the driving mechanism of popularity.
Erotic thrillers are nothing new, of course. But stuff like Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct had to be serious movies with big stars, focusing on real danger and psychological torment. Streaming movies don’t need that veneer of legitimacy. They can be about low-stakes plots happening to seemingly everyday families, making the “fantasy” more believable. A few good-looking actors – not even necessarily talented ones – are all you need.
The FOMO Effect
Movies like Desire are perfectly suited to our current age. They’re perfect to have on in the background while you make dinner or scroll on your phone, since they don’t require any real attention to understand. You can follow along easily and still feel part of the crowd.
And being a part of the crowd is a big deal. When audiences start to flock to these things, FOMO (fear of missing out) kicks in. When your various social feeds are awash with memes and posts and tongue-in-cheek analyses about a single topic, you want to get in on the discussion. Hate-watching is a team sport.
You can even see how movies like Desire are actively calibrated for this kind of consumption. The third act, a ludicrous stretch where it’s revealed how a dumbass family accidentally coordinated a murder, is tailor-made for mockery. It’s designed to be made fun of en masse. And as long as that remains true, tawdry erotic thrillers will continue to be made, and people will continue to watch them in absurd numbers.
