Top 10 Most-Read Movie Reviews of 2015

2015 has come and gone, so it’s time to look back, unveil and analyze the year’s most popular content on Eclectic Pop. We begin our journey with movie reviews.

When it came to the most read reviews of 2015, only two 2015 titles made it into the Top 10 (“Mad Max: Fury Road,” “Jurassic World”). While 2014 Oscar nominees comprised half of the list (“Wild,” “American Sniper,” “The Theory of Everything,” “Into the Woods,” “Nightcrawler”).

The enduring popularity of those titles would prove quite impressive. Especially when you consider almost all of those films came out towards the end of 2014, the only exception being “American Sniper” which made its wide release in January 2015.

Surprisingly, buzzy titles such as “Fifty Shades of Grey” failed to crack the top 15, whereas the summer’s tepidly received adaptation of “Man from U.N.C.L.E.” easily outpaced it, barely missing the Top 10. When it came to the popularity of negative vs. positive reviews, it was a tossup. Half were unabashedly negative, two were glowingly positive, and three were mixed leaning towards favorable.

In case you were wondering, the highest rated movie to make the Top 10 was screenwriter Dan Gilroy’s phenomenal directorial debut “Nightcrawler,” starring an Oscar snubbed Jake Gyllenhaal. 

One noticeable trend with the top crop was the response to movies which streamed on Netflix. By and large, they garnered far more interest than titles that did not. An indication of how strong reader interest is in what the growing streaming giant has to offer.

Among the popular titles, originality won out over for remakes, reboots, etc.; as readers leaned towards freshly imagined works. “Laggies,” “Nightcrawler” and “Honeymoon” were all based on original screenplays, which gave them no pre-existing audience to buoy interest.

Among the Top 10, there are only two franchise reboots (“Mad Max: Fury Road,” “Jurassic World”) and two adaptations of fiction, one Broadway (“Into the Woods”) and the other a Nicholas Sparks’ novel (“The Best of Me”). Biopics also proved to be a durable genre. “American Sniper,” “The Theory of Everything” and “Wild” were all adaptations of their protagonist’s best-selling memoirs. 

In the end, the winner by a landslide turned out to be a horror indie that streamed on Netflix and featured two stars of popular cable series (“Game of Thrones” and “Penny Dreadful”). Can you guess which movie it is? Scroll below to find the answer.

#10:  The Best of Me (2014)

#9:  Laggies (2014)

#8:  Jurassic World (2015)

#7:  The Theory of Everything (2014)

#6:  Nightcrawler (2014)

#5:  Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

#4:  Into the Woods (2014)

#3:  American Sniper (2014)

#2:  Wild (2014)

#1:  Honeymoon (2014)

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