Jodie Foster’s psychological thriller is a Netflix streaming hit 20 years after release, when it grossed $223 million at the worldwide box office.

Foster won an Oscar for the 1988 legal drama The Accused, then won a second for 1991’s psychological horror thriller Silence of the Lambs. The star followed up those twin triumphs by spending the 1990s taking multiple different genres for a spin.

There was the costume drama Sommersby, teaming Foster with Richard Gere. She did Western-comedy alongside Mel Gibson in Maverick, then played a scientist in the sci-fi drama Contact. She wound up the decade in another costume film, playing one of the two тιтle characters in Anna and the King of Siam.

Foster’s 1990s genre tour interestingly saw her avoiding thrillers, perhaps because she was hesitant to play another character similar to Lambs’ Clarice Starling. But her thriller-aversion went away in 2002, when she took the lead in David Fincher’s Panic Room, following it up with another thriller role in 2005.

Foster’s Flightplan Is A Hit On Streaming 20 Years Later

Foster’s second foray into the thriller genre in the 2000s, Flightplan was a hit when it released, and is again drawing eyeballs in the age of streaming. It stars Foster as a mother who loses her daughter on a flight, and must desperately search for the child, while proving she’s not imagining the whole thing.

Flightplan had the right plan to be a hit, grossing $223 million in 2005 ($435.6 million adjusted for inflation), and it’s back delivering pulse-pounding thrills in 2025, landing at #8 on Netflix’s Global Streaming Chart for the week ending August 3, 2025 (via Tudum). The streamer reports 6.2 million views for the Robert Schwentke-directed movie.

Our Take On Flightplan Being A Streaming Hit

Flightplan proved a hit in 2005 despite not receiving much critical acclaim (it currently sits at 37% on Rotten Tomatoes). The movie’s plot was bashed by critics at the time for being too outlandish and silly, a complaint that made sense in the wake of 9/11, when stories of trauma-inducing in-flight peril naturally hit differently.

20 years removed from the context in which Flightplan was released, its escalating ridiculousness no longer seems problematic, and it’s perhaps easier to enjoy the movie as another outlandish thriller among the many such films available on streaming.

Flightplan is indeed a lot better-made than most of the would-be suspense movies available on streaming today, and in Foster, it has a star who knows how to be compelling and real in even the most bizarre of situations. By 2025, Foster’s thriller has arguably become an underrated gem.