Entertainment
This 78% Rotten Tomatoes Sci-Fi Movie Is Quietly One 2026’s Biggest Streaming Hits
When a big-name sci-fi movie like Predator: Badlands hits streaming, it’s safe to assume that it’s going to do reasonably well. It’s less easy to foresee when a movie will seemingly come out of nowhere and find streaming success, especially when it’s a movie from a first-time director. So it’s impressive that Archive, filmmaker Gavin Rothery’s debut feature film (with a solid 78 percent on Rotten Tomatoes), has managed to become one of the biggest streaming hits of the year so far.
According to JustWatch, Archive is currently number 71 on its streaming charts, which cover “4,500 streaming services” and are based on the number of users who are clicking links to watch a movie, adding it to their watchlists, or marking that they have seen it. So, in theory, that’s number 71 across all movies ever, and JustWatch puts it ahead of far-more-famous films like Black Phone 2, Scream 2, and The Revenant. JustWatch also says the sci-fi movie spent five days in the top 10 and has been in the top 100 for 24 days. It likely helps that Archive is easily accessible: It’s currently available to subscribers on Netflix and Prime Video, plus free with ads on The Roku Channel and YouTube.
‘Archive’ Is a Sci-Fi Thriller About AI Surpassing Humans
Set in the relatively near future, Archive follows a scientist, George (Theo James from The Monkey), whose wife (Stacy Martin from The Brutalist) is killed in a car accident. Thanks to not-at-all chilling advances in AI technology, her memory is able to be stored digitally and George is able to communicate with her for a set number of hours. Being a grieving husband, George refuses to accept that and starts building a robot that will be able to store the — ahem — archived version of his wife permanently.
It is, of course, not that easy. The movie ends up having to say about mourning and love and the way humans react to both, plus a look at the dystopian possibility of our thoughts and feelings becoming proprietary data controlled by tech companies. We don’t know what the fine print looks like on an Archive contract, but would it be worth getting another 200 hours with a deceased loved one if it means their life would be used to train an algorithm? That’s not explicitly what Archive is about, but science fiction is beginning to tackle a decreasingly hypothetical and increasingly possible future we might find ourselves in before too long.
What’s particularly impressive about Archive’s timeliness is that it was initially released in 2020, a ways before AI became one of the dominant talking points of general human existence. It predates the trend, rather than chasing it. Also, while this is Rothery’s debut directorial feature, he did conceptual design work on Duncan Jones’ Moon. That’s a solid bona fide for someone working in the sci-fi movie business.
Once again, Archive is available on Netflix, Prime Video, Roku, and YouTube.
- Release Date
-
August 13, 2020
- Runtime
-
109 minutes
- Director
-
Gavin Rothery
- Producers
-
Luc Roeg, Phil Hunt, Richard Goldberg, Compton Ross, James Atherton, Nate Bolotin, Jan Pace, Norman Merry, Peter Hampden, Trevor Beattie, Theo James, Cora Palfrey, Philip Herd, Sarah Lebutsch
-
-
Stacy Martin
Jules Almore / J3 / J2 (voice)
-
-
