A Forgotten Fantasy With a Fan-Voted Name Just Slipped Into Amazon’s Top 10
Every streaming chart has a few titles that seem to arrive out of nowhere. They are rarely backed by a trailer drop or a marketing push, and they tend to appear quietly, a little below the headline acts, as if the algorithm simply remembered them.
Amazon’s movies chart this week is a good place to spot one. ‘The Love Hypothesis’ leads at number 1, ‘Now You See Me: Now You Don’t’ sits just behind it, and ‘John Wick: Chapter 4’ and ‘Jack Reacher: Never Go Back’ keep the action crowd happy further down. It is a lineup built on rom-coms, heists, and gunfights, which makes the film at number 9 stand out all the more.
That film is ‘The Secret of Moonacre,’ a family fantasy sitting at number 9 after just 1 day on the chart. It is a fairly unusual presence next to ‘The Amateur’ and ‘Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood,’ and it arrives with a surprisingly colorful history.
The 2008 film is loosely based on the 1946 novel ‘The Little White Horse’ by Elizabeth Goudge. It was directed by Gábor Csupó and led by Dakota Blue Richards, with Ioan Gruffudd, Tim Curry, Natascha McElhone, and Juliet Stevenson in supporting roles. Even its name has a story, since an internet poll let fans of the book choose between ‘The Moon Princess’ and ‘The Secret of Moonacre,’ and the latter won.
The story follows 13-year-old orphan Maria Merryweather, who is sent to live with her eccentric uncle, Sir Benjamin, at the crumbling Moonacre Manor, where she gets drawn into an ancient feud with the sinister De Noir family. Maria discovers she is the last Moon Princess and has to unearth the secrets of the past before the 5,000th moon rises and Moonacre disappears into the sea forever.
Critics were not especially kind at the time. The film premiered at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival, but it has a 23 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Screen Daily described it as a sluggish blend of humor and disengaged characters, though other reviewers singled out the production design for praise, noting sets like Maria’s star-painted bedroom with a glass dome ceiling.
That split is part of what makes its chart appearance interesting. The cast alone still carries some pull. Richards had previously played Lyra Belacqua in ‘The Golden Compass,’ while Gruffudd has stayed busy ever since, with a role as Adam Lockwood in ‘Bad Boys: Ride or Die’ in 2024. Curry’s villainous turn also gives the film something of a cult hook for fans of his work.
The film’s release history may also explain its lingering appeal. Its listed United States release date is August 12, 2010, well after it reached UK cinemas in 2009, which means many American viewers may have missed it the first time around. A quiet streaming arrival gives those viewers an easy second chance.
Whether it climbs any higher is anyone’s guess, and there is no big news event behind this particular placement. But for a fantasy adventure that critics mostly shrugged at nearly 2 decades ago, landing in a top 10 shared with ‘John Wick’ and ‘Jack Reacher’ is a pretty nice second act.
