Liam Neeson’s 37% Movie Surges Past Guillermo Del Toro’s Masterpiece on Netflix

Netflix does weird things all the time, but this one made me do a double take: Liam Neeson’s middling 2021 shoot-em-up The Marksman just jumped to #1 on the service in the U.S., while Guillermo del Toro’s lush, widely praised Frankenstein is sitting at #3. Yes, really. That’s per FlixPatrol’s current charts.

The numbers at a glance

• The Marksman (dir. Robert Lorenz) - Cast: Liam Neeson, Katheryn Winnick, Juan Pablo Raba, Teresa Ruiz. Runtime: 108 minutes. Rotten Tomatoes: 37% critics | 83% audience. Currently #1 on Netflix.
• Frankenstein (dir. Guillermo del Toro) - Cast: Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi, Mia Goth, Felix Kammerer. Runtime: 150 minutes. Rotten Tomatoes: 85% critics | 94% audience. Currently #3 on Netflix.

How did The Marksman lap Frankenstein?

The Marksman is as straightforward as it gets: Neeson plays a borderland rancher who ends up protecting a young boy from a cartel. Critics mostly shrugged, but everyday viewers were into it enough to give it that strong audience score. So how does a basic cable-style thriller outrun a prestige monster epic from del Toro? Welcome to the land of thumbnails, timing, and autoplay. Sometimes a familiar face plus an easy pitch is all the algorithm needs to hoist a title to the top.

The controversy shadowing Neeson

There’s an extra layer here. The film is spiking despite the lingering fallout from Neeson’s infamous interview with The Independent, where he recounted an episode from decades ago after someone close to him was sexually assaulted. He admitted he wandered the streets looking for a fight with a Black man, using a slur as he told the story. He called it shameful and later apologized, but the clip lives on and the reaction at the time was intense.

'I went up and down areas with a cosh, hoping I’d be approached by somebody - I’m ashamed to say that - and I did it for maybe a week, hoping some 'black b*stard' would come out of a pub and have a go at me about something, you know? So that I could... kill him.'

And yet, here we are: The Marksman is back in the spotlight. Maybe plenty of viewers never heard about the interview. Maybe they did and don’t care. Or maybe it’s just the Netflix carousel doing what it does best: feeding you a familiar Neeson-one-man-against-bad-guys template for a quick click.

Meanwhile, del Toro’s Frankenstein is the real deal

If we’re talking craft, del Toro’s film is on a different plane. He does his usual magic trick: taking a so-called monster and making him the aching, central soul of the story instead of a snarling prop. Jacob Elordi is a big part of why it lands. He has this wounded, protective energy that sneaks up on you; it’s one of his most demanding turns so far, and he never looks like he’s straining. Visually, the movie’s a stunner too — the kind of thing where you keep thinking every frame could be printed and hung on a wall. It’s not just another disposable Netflix drop; it plays like a full-on artistic statement.

So, what now?

I get why The Marksman charts: it’s comfort-food action with a household-name star. But if there were any justice in the weekly Top 10, Frankenstein would be the one sitting on the throne. Either way, both titles are streaming on Netflix in the U.S. if you want to do your own side-by-side.