disturbing documentary about Kidfluencers) and barely serviceable thrillers (I’m looking at you and your Die Hard-like action movie, Dylan Sprouse) are surely two of the most salient. Now, the streamer has combined the two into the ultimate piece of Netflix “content” and wouldn’t you know it, the result is a worldwide mega-hit.
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“iHostage” is a new thriller from the streamer based upon the real-life hostage event that took place in Amsterdam back in 2022. On February 22 of that year, a 27-year-old gunman entered the Apple Store in Leidseplein, Amsterdam, and held customers hostage for almost five hours, demanding €200 million in cryptocurrency to end the ordeal. The hostage-taker, later identified by Dutch newspaper Het Parool as Abdel Rahman Akkad, focused mainly on one captive customer, a 44-year-old Bulgarian man, while others hid in the store and people on the upper floor of the building remained trapped. During the crisis, police evacuated around 70 people before managing to take out Akkad in a manner that proved controversial in The Netherlands.
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It was a truly horrifying moment, made all the more surreal by the fact the gunman took selfies during the standoff and sent them to local press. What’s more, videos of the aftermath made the rounds on social media, adding an unsavory voyeuristic aspect to an already horrendous situation. Now, Netflix has turned the whole thing into a movie, which is apparently getting even more attention than the original event itself if the streamer’s charts are anything to go by.
