Panned by Critics, Loved by the Play Button: Russell Crowe's 'Unabomber' Stays No. 1 on Netflix Despite a 31% Audience Score

Neither critics nor audiences seem to love it, but everyone is watching. 'Unabomber', the Netflix thriller released on September 25, remained the platform's most-watched movie in the U.S. on Saturday, October 3, ahead of 'The Breadwinner' and 'Top Gun: Maverick', according to the daily chart compiled by What's on Netflix. On the official weekly chart, it debuted at No. 1 among English-language films with 16.4 million views and 27.4 million hours watched in just three days.

Directed by Denmark's Janus Metz, the film follows the young Ted Kaczynski, played by 'Room' star Jacob Tremblay, and his involvement in ethically questionable psychological experiments at Harvard run by psychologist Henry Murray, played by Russell Crowe. Shailene Woodley plays FBI agent Joanne Miller and Annabelle Wallis plays Christiana Morgan, in a story that jumps ahead to the decades-long manhunt.

The numbers have another side, though. According to Fiction Horizon, the critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes sits in the low 20s and the audience score at 31%. And despite the No. 1 spot, the debut ranks only 12th among Netflix's 2026 film openings, per What's on Netflix, far from the 41.4 million opening views of 'The Rip', for example.