Why is ‘Purple Hearts’ So Popular on Netflix?

Purple Hearts is unexpectedly becoming Netflix’s movie of the summer scoring over 100 million hours in its second week. On course to enter Netflix’s top 10 movies of all time, why is the movie performing so well? TikTok may have a lot to do with it. 

It’s certainly not critics’ reviews encouraging people to check out Purple Hearts. As of the time of writing the movie only holds a 38% on RottenTomatoes, with many praising the chemistry on screen but criticizing the main plot or some of the themes. Some of the more extreme reviews have criticized the movie for fetishizing the military.

Our own review of the movie wasn’t particularly kind either, concluding it had “an unearned romance for two spectacularly flawed people that ends in familiar territory for most TV movie dramas.”

Given the movie’s themes, it may be easy to conclude that the popularity of the movie has simply exploded in middle America, where the likes of Virgin River and Sweet Magnolias thrive but that’s not the case.

According to raw top 10 data from FlixPatrol, the movie’s popularity has been big around the globe.

So how popular is the movie? It’s on course to become one of Netflix’s biggest movies according to hourly data from the Netflix Top 10 site.

If we look at how it’s tracking, it has picked up 150.82 million hours watched in its first two weeks on the platform with week 2 garnering over 100 million hours.

Week Period	Hours Viewed(M)	Week Rank	Weeks in Top 10
July 24th, 2022 to July 31st, 2022	48,230,000	2	1
July 31st, 2022 to August 7th, 2022	102,590,000 (+113%)	1	2

Before we look at where the movie could land in the overall top 10s. Here’s a reminder of what the top 10 English language movies are as of August 10th:

1. Red Notice (364,020,000 Hours)
2. Don’t Look Up (359,790,000 Hours)
3. Bird Box (282,020,000 Hours)
4. The Adam Project (233,160,000 Hours)
5. Extraction (231,340,000 Hours)
6. The Gray Man (223,930,000 Hours)
7. The Unforgivable (214,700,000 Hours)
8. The Irishman (214,570,000 Hours)
9. The Kissing Booth 2 (209,250,000 Hours)
10. 6 Underground (205,470,000 Hours)

If we compare its trajectory against other movies, you can see it’s on course to beat The Unforgiveable in the overall top 10s assuming we don’t see a massive drop between weeks 3 and 4. At the moment, we’re predicting the movie to likely be somewhere between 5th and 7th once the first 28 days are up.

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Purple Hearts Explodes on TikTok

So why is Purple Hearts doing so well? TikTok could be playing a big part.

Short clips on the platform range from a few hundred thousand views to some getting over 10 million views.

Unlike posts for the recent Resident Evil, the TikToks aren’t done in jest either. They’re all heartfelt reactions to some of the more poignant moments from the movie.

This isn’t the first time with seen TikTok generate incredible viewership for individual titles. Earlier this year, Ginny & Georgia benefited from a few viral posts on the social media platform, allowing it to re-enter the top 10s (new releases almost always dominate a rarity given top 10s).

Reviews for the movie could also suggest that people generally connect to the movie in a way that critics could not. When a movie is good, people tend to tell their friends.

Why do you think Purple Hearts is doing so well on Netflix? Let us know in the comments.