​I don't know about you, but before this article, I hardly ever watched Netflix original movies. For me, an in-house Netflix movie was best represented by the string of poorly-reviewed Adam Sandler comedies that I had never been tempted enough to watch on my own. Sure, I knew they existed — it's hard not to, considering how frequently Netflix uses its marquee spot now to blast its original productions to viewers — but for the most part, those movies took a backseat in my viewing queue, compared to the platform's more well-known TV shows. It was hard for me to name a Netflix original movie off the bat, even harder for me to actually sit through one. For every "Okja," which I saw and liked, there seemed to be numerous other Netflix movies that were more akin to "Death Note," which I exited after five minutes of watching. And since those movies rarely popped up on my Netflix page, I had always assumed that it was the same case for everyone.

However, a recent conversation with a coworker, a man who regularly watches Netflix original movies despite the fact that he doesn't enjoy most of them, made me realize I had been missing out on a whole other world of Netflix original productions. There were so many original Netflix movies that I have never heard of — currently, Netflix has put out a little more than 120 original movies — let alone watched. I had long conceived of Netflix original movies as a product perennially outshined by its TV show siblings in both quantity and quality, but perhaps I was in the wrong. Maybe I just hadn't been watching the right movies.

A lot of criticism towards Netflix acquiring movies for distribution has been the fear that great movies are getting buried in the midst of Netflix's deep and seemingly endless library. While Netflix execs have rebuked such claims, citing the power of Netflix's recommendation engine to bring originals to the right audiences based on past viewing habits, I was curious what original movies the platform would try to market to a user without an established viewing history. If I started a new user profile, what original movies would Netflix recommend me to watch? Would it try to serve me critically-panned crowd-pleasers such as the Will Smith buddy cop fantasy film "Bright" or would it try to entice me with more awards-friendly movies like "Beasts Of No Nation" and "Mudbound"? Would the quality of these Netflix movies really be as mediocre as people make them out to be? What genre of movies would the streaming platform prioritize for a viewer with no visible preferences? And more importantly, would watching Netflix original movies, as I planned to do for a month, break my brain?

Here are the few things I've learned:

Original Movies Are Promoted A Lot Less Than Netflix's TV Shows

To start the experiment, I created a new profile under my Netflix account and skipped the section where Netflix asked me to choose three TV shows and movies. I wanted to see what movies and shows would be foregrounded if a new user without any apparent preferences was using Netflix for the first time. The good thing is the Netflix originals row is always placed very prominently at the top of the homepage when I made a new profile. The bad thing is the row only seems to reaffirm my preconceptions that Netflix original movies are often sidelined compared to the company's TV productions.

Depending on the profile I created — I created several throughout the month so I could have multiple examples of what a new profile homepage would look like, although I stuck to only one profile for all my viewings — Netflix movies occupied between one-eighth to one-tenth of the originals row offerings. The first time I created a new profile, there were only four original movies in the Netflix originals carousel: "The Kissing Booth," a young adult romantic comedy, "The Week Of," an Adam Sandler / Chris Rock comedy, "Bright" and the zombie drama "Cargo." That's four movies out of approximately 40 productions. In the latest profile I created, there were five movies in the Netflix originals row; the other 35 were all TV shows.

This is no accident. Netflix's TV production far outflanks its movies in terms of quantity. Netflix's Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos has promised Netflix will have 1,000 originals on its platform by the end of this year, and according to the company's CFO, around 700 of the original programming would be TV shows. Despite the fact that Netflix plans to release 80 original films in 2018, the meager real estate alloted to movies in the originals row seems to strengthen the argument that TV shows remain the platform's main focus, as it has been in the past few years with Netflix's non-originals catalogue.

(Young) Love Is In The Air

Critics have lately noted that with the breakout success of movies like "The Kissing Booth" and "Set It Up," Netflix seems to be launching a renaissance of movie genres that have been overlooked by movie studios these past years: romantic and teen comedies. The company certainly is giving romantic comedies what would be considered prime-time advertising in linear TV programming: top spots in the Netflix originals row on users' homepages. "The Kissing Booth" was ubiquitous in every new profile I created, and in the past month, other new romantic comedy titles, including "Ibiza," "Set It Up" and "Alex Strangelove" have also been featured in the queue, although not nearly as heavily as "The Kissing Booth."

The omnipresence of "The Kissing Booth," a teen comedy about a girl falling in love with her best friend's older brother, can perhaps be explained by the movie's purported popularity with viewers as well as its recent release. Netflix is famously guarded when it comes to revealing its viewership data, but Sarandos himself has painted the movie, which is adapted from a Wattpad story, as "one of the most-watched movies in the country, and maybe in the world," citing data from IMDB. According to Sarandos, IMDB is a better barometer to gauge how popular a show or movie is on Netflix, rather than Rotten Tomatoes. While it's still hard to know how an IMDB popularity ranking translates into actual viewership numbers, two Netflix original movies are currently among the top 25 most popular films released in 2018 on the movie database site. One is "The Kissing Booth"; the other is "Set It Up." While neither has garnered stellar reviews, given the two movies' ostensible popularity, it seems unlikely that Netflix will stop making and promoting movies that are conducive to, well, Netflix and chilling.

'Bright' And Adam Sandler Movies Are, Unfortunately, Unavoidable

Try as I might, it was impossible to avoid "Bright" and "The Week Of" in my newly-created Netflix profiles. While neither were promoted as prominently as "The Kissing Booth" — the latter would usually be in the first row of the originals carousel, while the other two would appear later in the carousel — "Bright" and "The Week Of" were just as ever-present.

The reasoning behind this? Like "The Kissing Booth," both films are likely the most-viewed original movies streaming on the platform. Adam Sandler's first two collaborations with Netflix, "The Ridiculous 6" and "The Do-Over," were touted as the service's biggest film releases before the debut of "Bright." After "Bright" was released late last year, Nielsen estimated that 11 million viewers streamed the movie in the first three days of its release¹. Netflix executives claim that "Bright" has been watched more than most Netflix originals, TV shows and movies and that the movie's commercial appeal was comparable to other popular movies of 2017 if you look at Google Trends. The Will Smith-Joel Edgerton fantasy action film is notably the only Netflix original movie to have a sequel greenlit.

Movies of mass appeal, especially popular movies that have had recent releases, seems to be what the platform is trying to promote the most to new users with no clear preferences in movies. In all the new profiles I created, "The Kissing Booth," "Bright" and "The Week Of" would be constants in the originals row, while there would be an additional movie that was more of a wild card in terms of its genre — the first time I created a profile, it was "Cargo," but in other profiles, it has been movies ranging from teen comedy "Alex Strangelove" to biographical drama "Brain On Fire." It makes sense, for though the platform itself emphasizes personalization in its movie and shows recommendations — so much so that the Netflix team even has a saying, "Your Netflix is not my Netflix" — it's a safer bet to promote movies that are less niche and more appealing to the lowest common denominator when it's dealing with profiles or accounts with no discernible predispositions when it comes to movies. Maybe that's the reason why Netflix has never spotlighted films like "Beasts of No Nation" and "First They Killed My Father," which, although critically acclaimed, may be alienating for a mass audience because of its slow-burn storytelling and bleak subject matter. It may also be the reason why documentaries are also absent from the Netflix originals queue in a new user's homepage, despite the fact that the Netflix catalogue houses many strong titles, such as last year's Oscar-winning "Icarus" and Ava DuVernay's Oscar-nominated "13th."

Interestingly, "The Cloverfield Paradox" has not received the same degree of promotion from Netflix on the homepage compared to Will Smith's "Bright" despite its high-profile debut after the Super Bowl this year. While the sci-fi thriller's surprise release initially generated much social media buzz, Nielsen estimates that "The Cloverfield Paradox" was not as big a hit with viewers as "Bright" was. According to Nielsen, only 2.8 million viewers tuned in to watch "The Cloverfield Paradox" in the first three days after its release, compared to "Bright's" 11 million. Despite the hefty sum of money Netflix must have spent on "The Cloverfield Paradox," which includes the $50 million it paid Paramount for distribution as well as a costly Super Bowl ad spot, it seems that the movie's lack of commercial success compared to "Bright"² has made it low on Netflix's priorities when it comes to recommendations for new users.

When it comes to promoting original movies to new users, popular movies, especially those with recent release dates, such as "The Kissing Booth" and "The Week Of," Adam Sandler's latest collaboration with Netflix, are the ones that are being prioritized on the homepage. Popularity seems to outweigh the scale of the movie's production and marketing budgets in Netflix's recommendations, as romantic comedies, a genre relatively cheap to produce, eclipses big-budget productions like "The Cloverfield Paradox" in terms of the amount of advertising it has been given by the platform.

Most Importantly, I Did Not Break My Brain Watching So Many Netflix Originals

Are the Netflix original movies any good? I would say for the little more than dozen Netflix original movies I watched, the majority were passable and fell somewhere between a five and a six on a scale of one to ten. Would I have watched movies like "Amateur" or "Game Over, Man!" on my own and watched it to the very end? Nope, but I've seen worst, one of those worst being Adam Sandler's "The Week Of," which was so boring and, frankly, inane that it took me three different sittings to finish the movie.

Luckily, not every Netflix movie is "The Week Of." In my viewings, I purposefully tried to steer away from movie titles that would be too similar to each other in terms of the genre or the stars that were attached just so I could have a wider understanding of what original movies Netflix offered. After I had watched a movie like "Bright," for instance, I tried to make sure the next movie I saw would be dramatically different from "Bright" to avoid Netflix pigeonholing me as a viewer who solely enjoyed buddy cop movies or sci-fi films³. As I watched more original movies, my user's page began to change too to reflect my viewing history. I went from having primarily young adult films or comedies in my originals queue to having movies like "The Siege of Jadotville" and "Beasts Of No Nation" recommended to me in the header image. And thanks to this experiment, I finally ran out of excuses to not watch "Beasts of No Nation," which has been on my Netflix list for some time but I had long delayed watching because, well, I was spending too much time rewatching shows like "Parks and Recreation."

Make no mistake, most of the Netflix original movies I watched were no "Beasts Of No Nation." Most of them were more of a "Bright" or "The Kissing Booth," movies that I considered mediocre but which were at least distracting enough to while away two hours for. And there were the really terrible ones, like "The Week Of" and "Death Note," movies which I couldn't even say I hate-watched, because to hate something requires a certain degree of passion for the thing in question.

And, of course, there are certainly hidden gems among Netflix's original movies that were finally unearthed by the algorithm — movies like "Cargo" and "The Babysitter." So, no, for the most part, my viewing of Netflix originals was not nearly as terrible as I had anticipated. It steered me away from my usual staples of "TV Shows Featuring A Strong Female Leads" and introduced me to rows like "Oddballs and Outcasts" and "Cringe Binge," the latter of which was a Netflix descriptor I didn't even know existed. I wouldn't recommend this watching regimen to normal Netflix users, but if you ever feel like carving out a second identity for your viewing habits, one where you explore different nooks and crannies of the Netflix world, you know what to do. You also know that movies like "Bright" and the latest Adam Sandler movie would likely be there waiting for you.