‘Exterritorial’: The Terrible Movie Everyone Is Watching

Exterritorial tops the non-English language film list on Netflix. I watched this ultra action-packed, hand-to-hand combat movie during its opening week, when it debuted at number one worldwide. That didn’t surprise me, since many new releases debut at the top spot simply because they’re new to the platform’s catalog. 

But then came the second week, and guess what? It’s still at number one, with almost 30 million views and more than 20 million hours viewed. Millions of hours have been spent worldwide watching this terrible movie.

Yes, Exterritorial is terrible. But Netflix users continue to watch it as if they were viewing one of those TikTok clips where a monkey plays with a cat. Let’s talk about this German film, starring Jeanne Goursaud as former military officer and Afghanistan veteran Sara Wulf. 

Sara suffers from PTSD; her husband, also a soldier, died in a mysterious, conspiracy-themed ambush in which she was the only survivor; and her six-year-old son gets kidnapped. That’s the plot, which we learn about five minutes into the film.

In the first two minutes alone, we meet widow Sara with her son Josh, strolling in a park in Frankfurt. Josh wants a PlayStation when they move to the United States because she’s got a job offer there, so they’re going to the American consulate where she’ll apply for a work visa. 

Suddenly, a helicopter flies overhead, and Sara flashes back to the war. Since she suffers from PTSD (or at least she assumes that’s what’s happening), she ends up beating a poor passerby who, by misfortune bumps into her. How do they not arrest her? Good question. But that doesn’t matter. She and her son continue on to the consulate in search of her dream visa.

We get from this first scene that Sara is psychologically unstable, that she knows how to fight, and that she’s a walking time bomb. And woe betide her son.

Before we dig further into the enormous and unnecessary amount of fighting, let’s apply some common sense. And yes, I know it’s a movie and it’s fiction and the idea is to entertain, but for the love of God, get serious about it.

Let’s address a few plot points the film’s writer-director, Christian Zübert, overlooks that undermine the credibility of the plot. Why would a prestigious American security company offer work in the United States to a German soldier who suffers from severe PTSD and must be heavily medicated lest she become violent and dangerous? Applying for an American work visa also requires a ton of documents, but we don’t see any of that here. There are no medical exams, psychological exams, nothing.

It seems as if the director’s only focus is on the action. But with what I just told you, perhaps you think there’s something out of the ordinary, something to ruin Sara for a reason we don’t yet know. 

Let’s press on. 

The action shifts to an establishment about the size of the Empire State Building that’s supposedly the American consulate in Frankfurt. This place is practically a maze. Sara and her son hand in their passports and begin an hours-long wait for the visa interview. 

Little Josh is impatient, so Sara takes him to a playroom, and that’s as far as Josh goes. The boy disappears, and Sara promptly starts beating up whoever she can to find her son. They try to make her doubt his existence. Does he really exist, or is she unstable enough to make him up? Of course, one call to the boy’s school would be enough to know for sure. But this is common sense, so obviously not part of this movie.

There are supporting characters so minor that they contribute nothing to the plot. It’s all about Sara being hunted while she tries to find her son, all the while fighting with dozens of men who can’t stop her.

And here’s where you think there’s a conspiracy against her. Well,  the director wants you to think that. By the way, in this supposed American consulate, there are two or three Americans, and the rest of the employees are Germans. That doesn’t matter. What matters here are the fights. And there are many.

I won’t reveal the supposed conspiracy, but it involves the death of Sara’s husband’s platoon in Afghanistan. But the illogical reveal only leads you to say: All this happened because of that? Dozens of fights, a kidnapped child, a bunch of lies, all for something the villain could have solved years ago? Please, at least lie to me in a more believable or creative way.

The worst part of all this isn’t even the film’s mediocrity, but the current state of the media, which has devoted dozens of online stories to explaining Exterritorial’s ending. There’s nothing to explain. Everything is absurdly clear – but not, I suppose, for those reading People magazine.