Rachel Zegler's Must-Watch Dystopian Action Movie Is Taking Over Netflix

The "Hunger Games" films have proved that women-led action movies can thrive at the box office, but the movies' longevity stems from the relatable themes and compelling characters in each installment. Indeed, author Suzanne Collins' "The Hunger Games" book series is just as popular as the films, and her continued involvement with the movies' development has certainly provided quality assurance. The sixth film, the upcoming "The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping," takes place during the second Quarter Quell (or the 50th annual Hunger Games) and is due out in November 2026. Right now, though, Netflix audiences are streaming the 2023 prequel movie "The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds on Snakes." The film, which focuses on the 10th Annual Hunger Games, was recently added to the streaming platform and has swiftly cracked the service's current Top 10 most-watched movies list (via FlixPatrol).

"The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes" stars Tom Blyth as the future dictator Coriolanus Snow (played by Donald Sutherland in the first four "Hunger Games" films) and Rachel Zegler as the District 12 tribute Lucy Gray Baird. More importantly, however, the movie's events mark the turning point for the annual Hunger Games (which forces two young people from each of the 12 Districts of Panem to fight to the death), as the barbaric practice begins to lose favor with the public, only to evolve into an even more powerful spectacle weaponized by the Capitol's regime to maintain governance.

It's no wonder people are tuning in to stream the film on Netflix, either — and not just because they want to prepare for "Sunrise on the Reaping" hitting theaters in a handful of months.

More than just an origin story, "The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes" traces the molding of Panem's future tyrannical ruler, exposing that villains are not born but that those willing to embrace their worst instincts are often rewarded by systems of control that can exist only through the subjugation of a "lesser" class. It's a mindset that will be uncomfortably familiar to modern American audiences currently enduring harm under Donald Trump's administration.

Snow didn't dream up the titular Hunger Games, but he recognized their potential and turned an already brutal institution into a tool that consolidated his own authority. The Capitol's treatment of the districts mirrors the ways marginalized communities are routinely devalued in the real world. Tributes from poorer districts are dismissed as disposable, making them less likely to receive the sponsorships that could keep them alive. Replace "sponsorships" with access to healthcare, housing, education, or economic opportunity, and Suzanne Collins' dystopia starts looking less like speculative fiction and more like a heightened reflection of the U.S. systems that already exist (which was always the point, mind you).

Neither Trump nor Snow invented the pathways that enabled their respective rises to power, but they both quickly realized the power of propaganda and of manipulating a narrative on a mass scale. We're living in a timeline where AI slop (and the government's official communication channel's obsession with it) has made it so it's difficult to determine fact from fiction. Hence, it's unsurprising that Netflix subscribers are tuning into a film that validates the existence of citizens who remain hopeless because a weakened enemy is less likely to attack.

"The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes" stands as one of the strongest "Hunger Games" movies, but the film's greatest triumph is Rachel Zegler. The titular songbird commands every scene with effortless charisma, and while her turn in 2021's "West Side Story" already made for a hell of a Hollywood introduction, her performance as Lucy Gray Baird cemented her as a star on the rise. Of course, her vocal prowess is once again on display with the fantastic folk tunes written by author Suzanne Collins and Grammy-winning producer Dave Cobb, but it's the emotional depth she brings to her role that proves she's more than just a talented vocalist That and the internet haters are wrong about Zegler.

Although the film is undoubtedly the story of young Coriolanus Snow before his rise to become the ruthless dictator of Panem, through his eyes, Lucy Gray is a reminder that even under fascist rule, there will always be captivating, unpredictable, and righteous people refusing to obey oppressive systems that are impossible to decode. Is Lucy Gray genuinely a warm and charming young trobairitz? Or is this all a carefully curated act of survival?

Like Jennifer Lawrence's arrival as Katniss Everdeen in the original four "Hunger Games" films, Zegler's role as the unintentional hero hailing from District 12 gives people everywhere a reminder that what we're going through is the result of decades of social evolution and that these devastating effects are our version of President Snow bombing a hospital just because he feels like it. As I've previously noted, we're living in the 74th Hunger Games, not the 10th, and that's a call for the thing that scared President Snow the most: hope.