Angelina Jolie's 100-Minute Taylor Sheridan Movie Is One Of Netflix's Biggest Streaming Hits

"Yellowstone" wasn't a ratings powerhouse right out of the gate. It took a couple of seasons for Taylor Sheridan's horse opera to become a small screen fixture and launch the man's television empire, which is how he found time to make a whole-ass movie in between the show's second and third outings. "Those Who Wish Me Dead," an adaptation of Michael Koryta's 2014 novel of the same name, was Sheridan's directorial follow-up to what was essentially his feature helming debut on 2017's "Wind River." He'd already called the shots on the horror flick "Vile" prior to that, but has admitted it was a glorified favor to a friend.

"Those Who Wish Me Dead" was one of many films that got entangled in Warner Bros.' ill-begotten scheme to draw more attention to HBO Max by dropping all of its 2021 movie releases on the platform the same day they hit theaters. That's part of why it didn't make much noise when it arrived on May 14 that year, the bigger factor being that exhibitors were still picking themselves up off the ground after the 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns. So, the odds are good that many people hadn't even heard of Sheridan's Angelina Jolie-led, bare-bones 100-minute thriller until it popped up recently on their Netflix queue.

Per the numbers reported by FlixPatrol, "Those Who Wish Me Dead" cracked Netflix's top 10 most-streamed movies in the U.S. on September 6, 2026, and has since climbed to the number three spot at the time of writing. And with "The Whisper Man" starring Robert De Niro and Adam Scott still sitting comfortably at number one, it appears the service's users are really in the mood for some mid-budget throwback fare at the moment.

"Those Who Wish Me Dead" comes across as a relic of a bygone era of cinema. One even suspects that Taylor Sheridan's film (which he co-wrote on top of directing) would have done boffo box office business back when these types of airport bestsellers (not an insult) turned mid-budget star vehicles were all the rage in the 1990s. Instead, it'll have to settle for gaining a second life on streaming, like other modern movies of this ilk.

Angelina Jolie stars as Hannah Faber, a smokejumper who's tormented by a recent tragedy and now oversees a remote fire lookout tower in the Montana wilderness. Sheridan keeps things clear-cut from there, pitting Hannah against two hitmen (Aidan Gillen and Nicholas Hoult) who start a forest fire to literally smoke out the young boy (Finn Little) they're after. Meanwhile, the boy's uncle-in-law (Jon Bernthal), himself the local deputy sheriff, and his very pregnant wife (Medina Senghore) soon find themselves in these killers' crosshairs as well. Also, Tyler Perry shows up, and it's just as random as that sounds.

While she admittedly looks a little out of sorts drinking beers with Hannah's fellow roughnecks early on in "Those Who Wish Me Dead," Jolie otherwise acquits herself nicely here as a living-on-the-edge type who needs to heal some old wounds. The film doesn't have much meat on its bones beyond that, but its no-muss-no-fuss design frees up Sheridan and his crew to focus on delivering tautly-crafted thrills with just enough rugged visual flair rather than getting bogged down in the paint-by-number plot mechanics. And with Senghore emerging as an unexpected MVP thanks to her character's tenacity and survivalist know-how, this is the rare Sheridan joint where the women are actually one of the highlights.